Subversive Muse's "Short Critique of Science" series

Just quickly--Rae at Subversive Muse has written a series of posts "from a critical left-wing perspective" on atheism, science and religion. I've expressed my objections to Rae's arguments--I think they basically misrepresent science (it is taken as axiomatic in this series of posts that science is "an ideology," whereas I think this needs to be argued for/demonstrated) and critique a strawman definition of atheism--and I know Bruce (who is more well-versed on this topic than I am) is preparing a response at his blog. Brian at Primordial Blog has written a thoughtful response as well.


Just to make it worth your while (and Rae, I'm not lumping you in with these guys!), here are some Youtube dispatches from the war on science:

"The Evangelical War on Science"


"The Republican War on Science"

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thnking XXXIII

The week in fundie . . .

1. God hearts Howard's policies: Howard. (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. Nothing restores my faith in the intersection of faith and politics than another heartwarming story from Saudi Arabia. Last week an appeals court increased the punishment meted out to a gang-rape victim (perfectly understandable, of course: she was in a car with males who were not her relatives) to 200 lashes and six months in prison. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
3. And nothing restores my faith in the willingness of certain Christians to follow the example of the central figure of their religion than the openness and tolerance displayed by the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, which last week expelled a congregation for welcoming gays and lesbians. Fundies. If they're not lying for Jesus, they're hating for him. (via Morons.org)
4. Meanwhile in Britain, women are queuing up for a kind of cosmetic surgery known as "virginity repair" to appease their future spouses and in-laws. All in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. All taxpayer-funded. (Daily India)
5. The response to PBS' Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is worth the price of admission (so to speak). (via Pharyngula)
   

Secular Believers:

Read More

Blatant Darwin Award

Man discovered dead in girlfriend's cat door
Wednesday Nov 14 10:00 AEDT

By ninemsn staff

A US man has been discovered dead in his girlfriend's cat door, leaving authorities confused about his exact manner of death.

The man, Charles Tucker Junior, was using the animal entry to gain access to his girlfriend's home on Sunday morning when he became stuck, News4Jax reported.

Officials said his girlfriend made the bizarre discovery only hours after she ordered him out of her house.

Speaking of Darwin, the PBS Nova special about the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," will be available for viewing online from November 16.

Worth listening to is a collection of audio clips from a range of scientists and philosophers explaining what does and does not count as science.

Read More

PBS Nova special: "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial"

I can't promise anything, but docos like these "accidentally" happen to find their way onto Google Video from time to time, and you can often find out about them at onegoodmove.

The Discovery Institute has already produced a video response, labelling PBS the "Propaganda Broadcasting System" and claiming that the documentary will not be "fair and balanced." The DI's video-whine also juxtaposes black-and-white images of "anti-ID propagandist Barbara Forrest" and "Darwinian Activist Eugenie Scott" with what I can only assume is supposed to be Third Reich-era German folk music. (Because supporters of science and reason are Nazis who just want to persecute Christian Fundamentalists ID advocates.)

Ah, the Discovery Institute. Long on ad hominems and plaintive whiny rhetoric. Short on research and evidence.

BTW: I found this 2003 transcript of a Science Show interview with Eugenie Scott discussing ID/creationism and "Project Steve."

Read More

Could this be creationism's latest gambit?

The Discovery Institute has issued a press release challenging the constitutionality of the "Educator's Briefing Packet" for the PBS NOVA doco Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.

"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," says Dr. John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute.

"The teaching guide is riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory," adds West.

The Institute has sent the PBS teaching guide out to 16 attorneys and legal scholars for review and analysis of its constitutionality.

I don't like their chances. Have a look at the packet in question: it talks about
what science is, why biological evolution counts as science and why creationism/ID does not. It also discusses why teaching creationism/ID in the science classroom has been ruled unconstitutional time and time again. And--I suspect this is the real sticking point for the fundies who are the most vocal supporters of ID--it discusses how one can accept evolution without jettisoning one's religious beliefs.

None of this constitutes an injection of religion into the science classroom. Sorry.

BTW: How long will it be until this is blamed on us evilutionist atheists?

Read More

Election '07: Whither the religious moderates?

"The centre needs to be reaffirmed," says Alister McGrath. "I want to make it clear, I have no doubt there are some very weird religious people who might well be dangerous, but those of us who believe in God, know that, and we're doing all we can to try and minimise their influence." I seriously doubt it. All I seem to hear from religious moderates nowadays is bitching and moaning about how the mean and nasty atheists--sorry--"new atheists"--don't understand religion and how wonderful it is. (There are exceptions, of course). Even McGrath is "doing all he can" to minimise the influence of the religious nutjobs: he's in Australia "helping evangelicals brush up on their arguments against The God Delusion" (emphasis added).

Meanwhile, the loudest and most influential voices in Australian Christendom belong to the Religious Right. You don't believe me? Back in August the Australian Christian Lobby was able to organise a National Press Club event, broadcast live across the country, in which both John Howard and Kevin Rudd addressed 200 church figures. That's influence.

Whither the religious moderates when this was taking place?

Want more evidence? Try this one on: it is actually possible, in a secular liberal democracy such as Australia, for someone who advocates the teaching of faith-based pseudoscience in the science classrooms of public schools, and who considers homosexuality to be a "perversion," to gain preselection as a candidate in a major political party. Instead of laughing and mocking him all the way back to his megachurch, enough party members consider him a suitable representative of their political organisation.

Whither the religious moderates in the Liberal Party, and why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this breed of nutjob, not to mention his supporters?

Now the Australian Christian Lobby has set its sights on Labor. Kevin Rudd wears his love for Baby Jesus on his sleeve, so the ACL is seeking to wedge him on the issues that should be closest to the heart of any Christian. No, not poverty. No, not the environment. I mean the really important stuff, like "family values"--which basically translates as gay marriage, abortion, porn on the intertubes and gay marriage. The Religious Right was able to wedge Labor on the gay marriage issue back in 2004, and Labor of course dropped its pants, bent over, stuffed the ball gag into its mouth and willingly submitted. Will it happen again? Probably.

Whither the religious moderates in the Labor Party? Kevin Rudd marked his ascendancy to the leadership of the Labor Party with a Monthly essay that, with its emphasis on the social-gospel element of Christianity, threatened to pull out the rug from beneath the Religious Right. He had the cojones to stick it to the fundies back then; does he still possess them now, or will he be reduced to shameless pandering? The ACL certainly hopes so.

Meanwhile, Australia's foremost member of the Spanish Inquisition has offered an apologia for the continued legal discrimination against gays. "Same-sex marriage and adoption changes the meaning of marriage, family, parenting and childhood for everyone, not just for homosexual couples," says Cardinal Pell, without offering any supporting evidence. His comments have the support, naturally, of the ACL's Jim Wallace, who says:

[Discrimination] is not something that is necessarily a bad concept, [. . .] I think what we're talking about here is making sure that while we remove unfair discrimination, that we do not allow a very small part of the population to force their model for relationships to be adopted as the community norm, when it isn't.

OH NOES!!! Ending discrimination against gays = MANDATORY BUGGERY!!!

[Wallace] says the problem is that equal rights for gay families complicate the definition of family.

"It confuses children and it's suggested that this is a normal and healthy alternative," he said.

OH NOES!! Ending discrimination against gay familes = LITTLE CHILDREN BEING SEDUCED INTO A LIFETIME OF BUGGERY!!!

Whither the religious moderates on this issue? Why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this Bronze-Age model of morality?

No, I guess it's easier to whine about the mean and nasty atheists not understanding religion and how wonderful it can be. Meanwhile, the Religious Right's two-pronged (Protestant-fundie, and Catholic-fundie) assault on secular liberal democracy continues unabated. I've said it before, and I'll say it now: we need people in Australian politics who are willing to speak up for the Enlightenment constituency (and religious moderates, frankly, can't be trusted to do it). We think, and we vote.

P.S. I wasn't the only one unimpressed with the recent Religion Report interview with Alister McGrath. It is being roundly panned on the ABC Guestbook.

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXX

The week in fundie:

1. There's been plenty of chatter on Oz blogs regarding the Family First "I can't believe it's not a Christian political party" Christian political party:

   About time there was some scrutiny of "Family" First (Mr Lefty)
   Family First home movies (Grods)
   Family First stifles free speech (Grods)
   Absolutely no connection between Family First and the church at all (Grods)
   “Right-Wing” Christian Australia’s War on Liberal Democracy (Thinker's Podium)
   

2. Southern Baptist seminary course teaches women students to "graciously submit to their husbands' leadership." Students learn "how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation." (via The Atheist Experience)
   
   More over the fold . . .
3. Pope Benedict on faith-based schools: "It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions."(via Dogma Free America)
   
4. In case you missed it, Tuesday October 23 was the Earth's birthday. 6010 years young. "Why was she born so beautiful, why was she born at all? . . ." (via The Atheist Experience)
5. From a creationist lesson plan:

   Evaluation: Students will be monitored by teacher observation during the classroom discussion, group work and answering the appropriate questions. Reflection paragraphs will be collected. The teacher will try to determine the students’ new courage and ability to defend their belief in the Creator.

   How's that for academic freedom? (via Pharyngula)
6. According to Pravda, Melbourne University biologists have discovered that dolphins descended from the human inhabitants of Atlantis. (via Pharyngula)
7. Re-closeted gay fundie James Hartline's explanation for the recent fires in California:

   They shook their fists at God and said, “We don't care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!” And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the heinous SB777 which bans the use of “mom” and “dad” in the text books and promotes homosexuality to all school children in California.
   
   And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

   
   (via Pharyngula)
8. "Security Moms": there is a new conservative group in the US (actually a front group for a conservative Washington think-tank) that agitprops in favour of the Bush Administration's national security and foreign policies. Family Security Matters has advocated that Bush make himself President-for-Life (in the tinpot dictator sense), and ranks universities and colleges (all of them) #2 in its list of the "Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America" (behind Media Matters). (via Kazim's Korner)
9. Banning Harry Potter: it's not just for Protestant fundies anymore. (Boston Globe)
10. Evangelical Christian UK Army Chief of Staff declares that "Christian leaders and chaplains in the Army [are] needed to equip soldiers for" life after death. (via Dogma Free America)
    

Read More

More Unconvincing Arguments for God: Little Johnnyism

Little Johnnyism is a variant of the argument to authority with which I am sure we are all familiar. When we were kids, Little Johnny was that boy down the street that our parents were convinced we all wanted to emulate. “Little Johnny does the dishes,” “Little Johnny keeps his room clean,” “Little Johnny mows his parents’ lawn,” and so on. The idea is that since we have some attribute in common with Little Johnny—that of being little--we are more likely to be impressed by the moral examples he sets than by those of an older person.

Apologists use Little Johnnyism when they rattle off names of celebrated ex-atheists who have found Jesus and/or God--e.g. Lee Strobel or Anthony Flew—reasoning that, since all atheists obviously think alike, they are equally likely to be impressed by such conversion stories. Some apologists, like Kirk Cameron, will even cite (or, as I suspect, manufacture) their own atheist pre-history and subsequent conversion tale—call it “Little Kirkism”—and then claim to know what all atheists think (and presume to tell atheists what atheists think).

My correspondent Trey himself uses Little Johnnyism when he rattles off a list of scientists—I mean, atheists are bound to be impressed by scientists, right?--who have made affirmative pronouncements on the existence of God/the supernatural.

Robert Jastrow, an astrophysicist, says this in talking about the Big Bang theory and its implications, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” In another interview he says, “Astronomers no find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover…That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” Arthur Eddington, a contemporary of Albert Einstein, said, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”

Sorry, Trey, but this proves nothing—other than the fact that even scientists are as prone to the argument from ignorance fallacy as the rest of us. And how does Jastrow know that the Big Bang was an act of creation? He doesn’t provide any evidence to support his claim—he simply asserts it. Creation implies a Creator. Add begging the question to that list of logical fallacies to which scientists might also be prone—particularly when they are speaking on matters that lie outside the purview of science, such as the supernatural. (Incidentally, it turns out that Jastrow also speculated that “the Big Bang may have been one of a series of cosmic explosions that alternate with cosmic collapses.” Ah, the pitfalls of quote-mining!) Trey goes on:

What they are talking about observing is that the universe and cosmos have a definite beginning. The Law of Causality tells us that everything that had a beginning has a cause. The cosmos have a beginning; therefore, it must have a cause. That cause must be eternal, timeless, infinitely powerful, etc. to have done this, which are characteristics remarkably like theistic God.

Firstly, while the Big Bang theory may suggest that the universe had a beginning, the cosmos is a different matter—google “multiverse theory.” Secondly, how does Trey know that whatever caused the cosmos did not itself have a beginning? How does he know that whatever caused whatever caused the cosmos did not itself have a beginning? And so on. Trey offers more scientists offering arguments from ignorance/incredulity:

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross took into account all the constants that are necessary to sustain life as it does not on earth, 122 in all, and what we know of the number of planets in existence, 10^22, and found that probability to be 1 IN 10^138. There are an estimated 10^70 atoms in the universe, so that number is absurdly high. Given that the universe is not eternal and did have a beginning, there is zero chance that natural nomena could explain existence. Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias said, “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.” To which you say and many atheists would say, “Nu-uh, that event happened. Shutup, science!” and I and my theists buddies would say, “Good work science. Seems reasonable to me.” However, the fact that that event cannot be recreated means that we will never know exhaustively what happened. This means that, regardless of how much support we get, there will be a need for some amount of faith in any conclusions.

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross--note the Little Johnnyist marker-- is an old earth creationist, and a detailed critique of his ideas on fine-tuning can be found here (see also this post by P Z Myers), but he’s basically making a “God of the Gaps” argument (“I can’t explain it, therefore goddidit”), as is the Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias. Nothing to see here, people. Of course in science we will never know exhaustively what happened with regard to past events such as the origin of the Earth, the solar system, or the Universe—the best we can do is arrive at sound models based upon the evidence we have. Isn’t that better than simply throwing our hands in the air and proclaiming “we don’t know . . . therefore goddidit”?

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVIII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Ann Coulter wants "Jews to be perfected." (Via Pharyngula)
2. Air America adds ex-evangelical Christian Dan Barker's Freethought Radio to its line-up, and FOX News screams "GODLESS PROGRAMMING!!" (Via Pharyngula)
3. Under Christian and Muslim pressure, UK teachers are becoming reluctant to teach evolution and are being urged to teach creationism.
4. Left Behind Games: Criticise our sad excuse for a computer game, and we'll sue! (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
5. Kent Hovind talks to God. And God talks back. Yessireebob!
6. US Department of Defence greenlights fundamentalist Christian proselytism in the military. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
7. Catch the Fire: Baby Jesus told Pastor Nalliah that he wants John Howard to win the election (Alan Matheson)

Ann Coulter: Anti-Semite

Read More

PZ Myers' mutating genre meme

Here are the instructions:

The Pharyngula mutating genre meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.

• You can delete any one question.

• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…".

• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My parent is: Pharyngula.

1. The best time travel novel in Magical Realism is…

The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco.

2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…

Cold Mountain.

3. The best sexy song in industrial rock is…

Closer, by Nine Inch Nails

I shall attempt to disseminate my seed of a meme to:
Mikey Capital
Ninglun
The Thinker's Podium
A Churchless Faith
Unorthodox Atheism




Via Nullifidian, Kent Hovind getting pwned on the Infidel Guy. . .


Funny stuff. God himself now talks to this guy in his prison cell.

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Texas law, with the Orwellian title "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," allows evangelical students to proselytise to captive audiences at public school assemblies. (Alternet)
2. Fundies--of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties--call for the shutting down of a San Francisco gay and lesbian festival and for the boycott of sponsor Miller's. (As one liberal pastor observes, a conservative Christian boycott of alcohol--isn't that a little like Hindus boycotting beef?) (The Bay Area Reporter)
3. Archbishop declares he would refuse communion to Rudy Giuliani. (via Morons.org)
4. The Red Mass: where Catholic archbishops have the annual opportunity to instruct the members of the US Supreme Court on how to vote on constitutional matters. (via TheocracyWatch)
   
5. God-fearing evangelical Christians--default moral exemplars to us all--gay-bash an Indian man to death in Sacramento. Apparently "God has 'made an injection' of high numbers of anti-gay Slavic evangelicals into traditionally liberal West Coast cities," according to the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento. "'In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin,'" he said. The murderers belong to a Latvian Pentecostal church linked to anti-gay activist Scott Lively, who in the 90s wrote a book comparing gay rights activists to Nazis. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
6. William Dembski: evil atheist materialist scientists unfairly try to rationalise away the existence of angels (which Dembski insists are as real as rocks and plants and animals) with reason and science and whatnot. Evil atheist materialist scientists!
   

Religion as Child Abuse

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVI

The week in fundie . . .

1. An article in the Washington Post surveys McCarthyism across the Islamic world. In one example, three Saudi Arabian democracy activists were thrown into prison on charges of using such "unIslamic terminology" as 'democracy' and 'human rights'.
2. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain declares America a Christian Nation. Quote

   "But I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'"

   unquote. (Beliefnet)
3. Producers of intelligent design documentary Expelled lied (for Jesus) to various interviewees, including PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, in order to secure their involvement. (via Pharyngula)
4. Catholic archbishop: condoms from Europe are deliberately infected with HIV in order to wipe out Africans. (via Pharyngula)
5. The MySpace page of Major Freddy Wellborn, who lied (for Jesus) his way into a meeting of atheists and freethinkers among US military serving in Iraq and then shut it down. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. UPDATE: Chicago dentist orders employees to recite Scientology formulas in order to get their paychecks, and learn about Scientology in order to keep their jobs. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   

Ben Stein's Expelled

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXV

1. An atheist US soldier serving in Iraq organises the first ever meeting of that country's chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, having dotted all the necessary 'i's and crossed all the necessary 't's. Of the four soldiers who attend this meeting, one turns out to be a Fundamentalist Christian army major, posing as a "freethinker." Said fundie proceeds to verbally harangue the other attendees--after he has ordered them to stand to attention--for "plotting against Christians" and "being disrespectful to other soldiers," and then shuts the meeting down. This actually happened.

Well, the organiser has since filed a lawsuit, and for his troubles has been threatened with fragging by good Christian soldiers (good purely by virtue of being Christian, of course) in his own unit. Fragging non-theists: it's what Jesus would do. (Austin Cline/No God Blog)

2. A Muslim dentist in Britain has been accused of demanding that a female patient cover her head with a scarf in traditional Muslim fashion before he would treat her. (Austin Cline)

3. Police catch youths who spraypainted images of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on various buildings in a Canadian town. (Is this a hoax?)

4. In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party is pushing for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools. (Pharyngula)

From OneGoodMove, Bill Maher spells out The New Rules. You have been schooled, my friends.

UPDATE re: the atheist soldier in Iraq. I've been reading the discussion forum at the Military Religious Freedom Association website. A commenter writes:

I don't know if there has been any coercion on the part of officers in the military. It may have occurred on occasion - I just don't know. However, if only one soul were saved as a result of the activities in the military, wouldn't it be worth it? All the wealth in the world isn't worth the value of a single soul. My point to Mr. Weinstein was this: Is he actually doing what God wants Him to do? Maybe the persons involved in the military are doing what God has asked them to do.

Browbeating and threatening non-theists: it is what Jesus would do!

Read More

Idiocracy

Synopsis: The story is told from the perspective of Joe, an army librarian who, along with prostitute Rita, becomes a guinea-pig in a top-secret military hibernation experiment. After a prostitution scandal forces the closure of the army base on which the experiments are being conducted, the sarcophagi containing the hibernating Joe and Rita are forgotten. They emerge 500 years later in an America that has become, as a result of low fertility among intelligent people, overrun by idiots. The most popular TV show features a man who is repeatedly kicked in the testicles. The most acclaimed movie features 90 minutes of someone's bare buttocks, punctuated by the occasional fart. The nation faces widescale famine because the crops have dried up, a result of years of being irrigated by a sports drink full of electrolytes.

Joe, a man of painfully average intelligence in his own time, suddenly finds himself the smartest man in the world. After several brushes with the law (and jailtime owing to the incompetence of his lawyer), he is recruited by the President to solve the impending food crisis, and is given a week to do so. When his ingenious plan--to irrigate the crops with water rather than a sports drink--fails to produce immediate results, Joe is sentenced to gladiatorial combat with monster trucks in a demolition derby arena. When the crops start growing, Joe is saved from certain death and eventually becomes President, signalling the dawn of a new era. As he declares in his address to Congress,

There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!

This is a film that you can't really take at face value. At face value, it comes across as just another lame, low-budget gross-out comedy replete with toilet humour and terrible acting. But then you realise that's the whole point: the very species of teenage knuckledragger who would be attracted to Idiocracy based on its face-value qualities is the very target of the film's satire. Actually, there are other targets, too: anti-intellectualism, corporatism, materialism, and the dumbing-down of education (Joe's "lawyer" received his degree from a city-sized warehouse retail store). And guess which news channel the idiots are watching in this dystopian future? In 1997, director Mike Judge gave us the brilliant Beavis and Butthead Do America; Idiocracy shows us what happens when Beavis and Butthead run America.

Wikipedia notes some of the difficulties the film faced upon its 2005 release. It was only released to a handful of screens across the U.S., and "20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, did nothing to promote the movie." Nor was it screened for critics. It is speculated that Fox, unhappy with the unflattering portrayal of its news channel as well as the film's anti-corporate message, deliberately sabotaged the film's chances of garnering a wide audience. The closing sequence of the film features a theme-park tour of world history in which Charlie Chaplin leads the Nazi Party and dinosaurs are featured as World War Two combatants; perhaps, in a country which recently saw the opening of a multi-million-dollar Creation Museum where humans are shown walking with dinosaurs, the satire hit too close to the mark for comfort. In any case, you can get it on DVD now.

See also: "The Movie Hollywood Doesn't Want You To See" (Slate)

Read More

The Photoshop Creationism Challenge

B3ta.com posed the following challenge to its contributors:

Creationists believe that everything in the universe was created absolutely by a deity, and that evolution is hocus pocus, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Please portray this conflict using God's own image-manipulation software.

Here are some of the gems they came up with:













Via the comments at Pharyngula.

Read More

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVIII

The week in fundie:

1. Homophobic street preacher whines about hypocrisy because he has been refused permission to march in a gay pride parade. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Incidentally, the WorldNetDaily article detailing the poor oppressed anti-gay activist's plight refers to said gay pride parade as a "gay" pride parade. Why the scare quotes? Are the participants not gay? Are they only pretending to be gay? Why do wingnuts do this? Are they stupid or something?)
2. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jews are threatening violence against this year's gay pride parade, having acted upon similar threats in previous years. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
3. And if you happen to be gay--or even if you're accused of being gay--in post-Saddam Iraq, it significantly increases your chances of being shot, burned and/or beheaded by Shi'a fundamentalist death squads. (Via uruknet) (Warning: follow the links at your own risk--they contain images that are definitely NSFW.) Isn't faith a wonderful thing?
   
4. Over in Pakistan, a Christian man has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Mohammed. (Via Richard Dawkins.net)
5. Confused by "NOMA?" US Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback unpacks it for you in an op-ed for the New York Times. The way to balance science and faith is to cherry-pick those elements of science which are consonant with your religious ideology (or could be interpreted to be so); if it doesn't agree with your religious presuppositions, you simply write it off as "atheistic theology posing as science." Simple, no? (Richard Dawkins.net) (More info. on the science-friendly Brownback campaign in this post)
6. New Zealand is set to get its own version of Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Via Pharyngula)
7. Why some people resist science (Via Pharyngula)
   

Read More

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)
   

Read More