Oooh, baby. That's a Nu-Life Communion Host Dispenser, equipped with a rapid reload system for fast wafer loading and quad-rotator technology that allows up to 400 wafers to be fired without reloading. If you need to shovel Jesus into people's mouths at a high rate of speed, this is the gadget for you. And you can get it in gold, silver, or white.
Or maybe you'd prefer the Communalabra Germ-Free Communion Host Dispensing System, which is only available in gold, but does have accessories: a Host Tube Quick-n-Easy Re-fill & Re-load System, and embroidered carrying cases and covers.
And look at this: they're both made in Minnesota! I'm so proud. Unfortunately, right now the two companies are tied up in a lawsuit. When they get it cleared up, though, I'm going to have to let them know that I'm available at reasonable rates for celebrity endorsements.
They better act fast, though. I might just throw my endorsement to this automatic disc shooter. Imagine how much fun church will be if all the communion celebrants could just stay in their pews while the priest whips this colorful beauty out and starts winging wafers through the air. Combine it with a super-soaker loaded with wine, and mass becomes a party for everyone…even flyin' Jesus!
The On Faith editors at The Washington Post asked panelists to answer a simple question today. What you see below is the question and the opening paragraph of Herb Silverman’s response:
I love that quote, which is one reason why I’m disappointed with some of what Silverman said afterwords. Silverman followed a brief discussion of the ARIS report that was released in March 2009 with a description of two kinds of atheists:
Group A: Atheists who don’t suffer fools gladly. They point out that religious belief should be treated as any other kind of belief, open to criticism, and that unquestioned faith is a vice with inherent dangers, not a virtue to be respected.
Group B: Atheists who prefer identifying as humanists, who would rather look for ways to make this world a better place than talk about gods in which they don’t believe. They try to find common bonds between theists and nontheists, and seek issues on which to cooperate. Their focus is on being good without God.
Group A’s take pride in being intellectually honest, while Group B’s take pride in helping a movement grow. Quite a few, myself included, have a foot or toe in both groups.
Silverman doesn’t do atheists any service by dividing us into two camps. In fact, doing so feeds the idea – which many theists will be only too glad to exploit – that there is a significant rift among atheists. It seems to me that most atheists who think about their beliefs in a serious manner identify with both of Silverman’s groups, as Silverman himself does. Intellectual honesty does not preclude finding common ground with people whose beliefs differ from ours, nor does humanism preclude behaving in an intellectually honest fashion. I’m sick to death of people debating whether agnostics are closet atheists, whether atheists are militant or mushy, hard or soft, strong or weak, whether they inhabit foxholes, and, now, whether they’re Type A or Type B atheists. These distinctions don’t do anything to advance the causes of
a) using the best tools we have available – intellectual and technological – to build better societies, and
b) helping the world rid itself – voluntarily, not by force – of the tools (many of which are religious in nature) that impede human progress.
Having pointed out where I disagree with Silverman, I want to note something he said that I’ve thought for a long time:
The message that needs to get out is how many non-atheists live like atheists, for all practical purposes, without belief in a judging god involved in the workings of the world. This would include all deists, almost all Unitarians, and most liberal religionists of all stripes…. I expect this category of “functional atheists,” those who believe that their actions in this life have nothing to do with how or whether they are treated in an afterlife, is larger than just about any religious denomination.
I know people who live as functional atheists. They may believe in some sort of creator-deity, but they don’t live as if that belief makes any difference in their lives. They don’t go to church or are, at best, C&E Christians, they don’t pray or fast or tithe, they don’t read their Bibles and probably couldn’t even tell you, at any given moment, where their family Bibles are located. The question is, does it matter whether these people identify themselves as atheists? On the one hand, it does, because doing so would be intellectually honest. On the other hand, if their minuscule theism doesn’t negatively affect how they function in society – in other words, as long as they make political and social decisions based on facts rather than creeds – it may not matter whether they attach labels to themselves. Overall, though, if functional atheists would acknowledge themselves and accept their nonbelief in dogma and superstition, the causes of atheism and humanism could take significant steps forward in a hurry.
Silverman concluded his post with these words:
Whatever parents teach their children about God or Santa, I hope it will include a message to be good for goodness’ sake, a message to live by in all seasons.
I agree that being good for goodness’s sake is worthwhile and never untimely, but I think that, as long as adults continue teaching children about God, they will have difficulty teaching children to be good for goodness’ sake. I won’t go so far as to say the two messages are incompatible, but I think any marriage between the two will be stressful and plagued by contradictions. Thus, I would prefer to see people jettisoning their god-beliefs and embracing their humanity. Being good for goodness’ sake is the best we can strive for in a world in which the omni-absence of deities is, to say the least, conspicuous. Humankind can be good and should be good, not because doing so pleases gods, but because being good is the finest expression of our humanity.
– the chaplain
Posted in atheism, humanism, religion
The Church is providing us today with a lesson in physical chemistry. Let us sit in science lab with our bunsen burners powered up and observe:
An army of fundamentalists is mustering in Africa. From the looks of an article written today by Charles Lewis for the National Post, religious fervor is growing there at an alarming rate. Three hour church services, thousands baptized into the mother Church on a daily basis. The Church is seeing its decades long mission there pan out, its work to shore up fighters for a war.
And Africa has provided perfect recruitment ground: soaring birth rates, little or no education for the masses. Come up with some selective and carefully propagandized health care, serve it up with a side order of Jesus, and you’ve got yourself a new army to fight the increasing numbers of individuals in the western hemisphere who are questioning the idiocy of religion and staying away from churches in droves.
From the article by Charles Lewis: “According to World Christian database, 2% of the world’s Christians lived in Africa in 1900; today it’s 20%. In less than 40 years, Africans will comprise 30% of the world’s Christians.” Later in the article, Father Michael Czerny is quoted as saying “I see people turning to the Church like in the Gospels they turned to Jesus, namely with inarticulate faith and trembling hope that He can resolve their most pressing afflictions and ailments.”
Inarticulate faith and trembling hope. Well, praise the Lord. If you can come up with two more powerful human motivating forces for an external authority, I’d love to hear what they are. It’s disconcerting that not only do too many humans on this earth have blind “inarticulate” faith in a mysterious supreme being, but that their number is growing in the face of this supreme being’s blatant disregard of their intelligible pleas. And since when is inarticulate faith a positive human quality? It’s a cry in the wilderness, a bleating of sheep.
The Church has always played a numbers game or as Father James Okoye, a Nigerian theologian says in the article, “The entire history of the Church has been one of reordering balance, in which areas with the most fervor and numbers find their way to the regions in religious decline or need.” Religious balance? You can almost see the Vatican church boys applying Fick’s First Law of Diffusion as they pour over a satellite map of Africa, postulating that the flux of increased fervor there will quite naturally flow to regions of low concentration with a magnitude that is proportional to the concentration gradient.
Just when rationalists get a foothold in North America, and the art of questioning is gaining popularity, we must brace ourselves for an influx of religious fervor from across the pond. What’s worrisome is that this new evangelical movement does not bode well for women. As John Allen, author of Future Church writes, “Issues such as abortion, condoms, and female priests will not even be on the table in part because of the African influence.” Looks like we’re going to have to shore up the concentration of thinking and questioning and rationalism to stem the tide of idiocy that is threatening what little ground we’ve gained.
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — Supporters of John Freshwater stood in a parking lot yesterday asking God to inspire the school board to make the right decision.
Three hours later, the board announced that it intends to fire Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher.
Freshwater preached his Christian beliefs about how the world began, discredited evolution and didn’t teach the required science curriculum, the board says. He was told to stop teaching creationism and intelligent design, but he continued to do so, an investigation found.
“We’re all Christian people. … But rules are rules. You just can’t do that in a public school,” said Karen McClure, a Mount Vernon resident who was at yesterday’s meeting to support her daughter, school board member Jolene Goetzman.
McClure was one of about 60 people at the meeting in the Mount Vernon Middle School library. Most were Freshwater supporters.
Freshwater burned crosses onto the arms of some of his students and told them that gays are sinners, the school board said in a resolution the five members passed unanimously yesterday after meeting privately to discuss the results of an investigation.
Freshwater’s actions became public in April after he refused to remove a Bible from his desk. Yesterday, his attorney, R. Kelly Hamilton, focused on the Bible in characterizing Freshwater as a victim who’s being denied his Constitutional right to practice his beliefs.
“They have to tear him up, beat him up, to distract from the issue of the Bible on the desk,” Hamilton said.
Freshwater will request a hearing before the school board to contest the firing, Hamilton said.
After learning of the board’s decision, Freshwater called the consultants’ report half-truths and said he never veered from the state standards for teaching science.
High-school science teachers told consultants that Freshwater’s teachings were undermining science instruction in the district. They reported having to re-teach scientific concepts to students who took Freshwater’s class.
Complaints about Freshwater’s teachings were made by teachers and people in the community for at least 11 years, a school administrator told consultants. Freshwater has taught eighth-grade science in the district for 21 years.
In April, the school board hired HR On Call Inc. to investigate Freshwater, four months after the parents of a child in his class said he had burned a cross into the child’s arm, causing swelling and blistering.
Hamilton called the complaints “fabrications created by a couple of students. … Not a single child has ever been harmed,” he said.
The family of the boy filed a lawsuit last week against Freshwater and district officials, claiming the boy’s civil rights were violated.
The branding was done with a machine used to show characteristics of gases.
In Mount Vernon, the public debate over Freshwater is reflected in signs on the road, one saying that if the school board made Freshwater remove his Bible from his classroom, the community would get rid of the school board.
“It saddens us that we’re at this point,” said Mary Lou Sinzinger, a Freshwater supporter. “This God-fearing community is one of the reasons we moved here.”
As one of the most powerful liars in the world, Matt Drudge takes perverse pleasure in twisting facts to fit his right-wing denialist agenda. He’s got this down to a fine art, cherry-picking and sometimes re-writing actual headlines from newspapers around the world. He editorializes by the way he groups stories, often making it seem like there is a groundswell of evidence for his tea-party talking points. It’s a hell-in-a-handbasket approach, with breathless exploitation of every possible logical fallacy (which gets him a direct line to the paleo-Republican amygdala). Add a dose of mean-spirited schoolyard taunts, and you have the essence of the Drudge Report.
All that hyperbole gets him tens of millions of page-views daily and a virtual lock on the news cycle. Proving that a free press is not much of a guarantee of anything, except that those who shout what people want to hear in the loudest voice control the conversation.
Drudge can be counted on to trumpet every major or minor storm. Never mind what’s happening with the climate, he locks his jaws onto every degree of winter weather like it was a hunk of red meat. ‘RECORD STORM BLANKETS MIDWEST…BLIZZARD…ICE STORM…CHILL MAP…THOUSANDS WITHOUT POWER. “See, I told you so!” And if some climate protest ever gets snowed out, he’ll tell you all about it with self-righteous derision. When nature turns on the oven, and it’s above 40 Celsius (104 F) like it has been in Australia the past day or so, Drudge is silent.
His usual cherry-picking is bad enough. But today, that was punctuated by something even more insidious–outright lying. How do you lie with a headline? By grouping it with others and fostering deliberate semantic confusion about the facts.
Here’s the headlines:
NO RISE OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON FRACTION IN PAST 160 YEARS, next to this one:
SNOWSTORM SQUELCHES CLIMATE CHANGE PROTEST
What a bunch of buffoons!!!! Right?
The first headline linked to a story in Science Daily.
Wow, I thought, that’s unusual, since it’s well-known that CO2 has gone from pre-industrial levels around 265 ppm to the current 389 ppm. What’s up? I was expecting to read about how thousands of scientists had all collectively made an error in measurement, were now correcting it, and “the whole of climate science is being re-evaluated.”
Not.
The story is talking about the percentage of atmospheric carbon which remains in the atmosphere (about 45 percent) vs. that which gets absorbed by the ocean and other carbon sinks. As atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen, what this means is that 55% of it is still being absorbed. That is expected to change as the oceans become saturated with the gas. So not only will ocean acidification get steadily worse, but the oceans will eventually lose their ability to absorb carbon altogether.
Drudge can read, he knows damn well the headline doesn’t mean what it seems to imply, yet he ran it anyway. If there is a definition of failed journalistic ethics, this is it. I’d go a step further and call it just plain evil.
From Science Daily:
However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.
Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.
To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.
In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.
Given the stakes, what this study really means is that we have to be even more careful because we might be nearing a tipping point at which the oceans suddenly become saturated. At that point we would get more than a doubling of the portion in the atmosphere, leading to a non-linear increase and even faster temperature rise than expected. We really need to know if this is going to happen. If it does, it’s a problem so huge as to not even be able to be expressed in financial or human terms. The changing of the chemistry of the seas, which make up 3/4 of our planet’s surface poses an existential threat like no other. Essentially what this study documents is the incredible service we’ve enjoyed. Our oceans have at no cost removed over half of the human CO2 pollution from the atmosphere for the last two centuries.
This is something vital to our continued existence, and it may halt or reverse at any time. We need to know when that time might be, and we should all be very concerned in a very personal way about reaching it.
But thanks to Drudge, the GOP can toast the new decade tonight in blissful ignorance of our peril, because there’s been “no increase in the atmospheric carbon fraction.”
***Update***: It was correctly pointed out to me that the main link for this article is a year old. The information is accurate, but outdated. My fault for thinking it was recent news.
Thanks to Ed for letting me know!
…
John Freshwater is the 8th grade science teacher from Mount Vernon, Ohio who was all sorts of fundamentalist:
This is not a man who should be involved in the education of young minds. He was incompetent in the one area in which he had to teach students.
Thankfully, after more than a year of discussing him, he has been fired.
Finally.
High-school science teachers told consultants that Freshwater’s teachings were undermining science instruction in the district. They reported having to re-teach scientific concepts to students who took Freshwater’s class.
Complaints about Freshwater’s teachings were made by teachers and people in the community for at least 11 years, a school administrator told consultants. Freshwater has taught eighth-grade science in the district for 21 years.
…
In Mount Vernon, the public debate over Freshwater is reflected in signs on the road, one saying that if the school board made Freshwater remove his Bible from his classroom, the community would get rid of the school board.
“It saddens us that we’re at this point,” said Mary Lou Sinzinger, a Freshwater supporter. “This God-fearing community is one of the reasons we moved here.”
I don’t know how Christians could defend a man like this. They cling so strongly to their beliefs, they don’t care when he harms students or breaks the law, as long as it’s done in the name of their personal god.
Not every Christian supported him, obviously, but enough to make you worry about the education these students will be getting.
At least they can now get someone in the classroom who might know a thing or two about science.
(via Deep Thoughts)
Come Mr. DJ song pon de replayWell, we're off to a nightmare. I am trying to decipher what is a "pon de." I thought it might be a contraction of "put on the." But song...pon...de ... what language is this? And "wantin some more what?" Well, what? Which what do you want, you precious inarticulate thing?
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
All the gyal pon the dancefloor wantin some more what
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
it goes 1 by 1 even 2 by 2Pronoun references are things that other people do, right Rihanna? I'm about to get all 2-by-4 on your ass. Or, in words you'll understand, "walkdark pon de lumberpunch."
everybody on the floor let me show you how we doWait, wait, wait! Do WHAT? How you do what? Not finish sentences?!? I'm sorry, but this hurts me. Alright, let's continue.
lets go dip...
lets go dip it low then you bring it up slowAh, a riddle! What can you wind twice that you may dip, Grasshopper?
wind it up 1 time wind it back once more
Run, Run, Run, Run"Someone's got a gun!"
Everybody move runAre you dancing or running? Rihanna? How's the DJ gonna turn it up if he's running. Just saying.
Lemme see you move and
Rock it til the grooves done
Shake it til the moon becomes the sun (Sun)Ah, now we're talking my language: astronomy! Yay. There is a sense in which this is not completely and totally inept use of metonymy, if metonymy means what I think it does. The sun is in its prime, shining away all happy, but because it is not interesting, er, massive enough to go supernova, in its dotage, the sun is going to swell into a red giant, the diameter of which will be larger than the orbit of Mars. At that point, Earth is going to be inside the orbit, and will collide with the particles inside the sun, slow down and fall into its center. This will also happen to the moon, and so the moon will become the sun. So, Rihanna is basically commanding...someone...to shake it for approximately 7.5 billion years. Good luck with that.
Everybody in the club give me a run (Run)Quick! Snag her pantyhose! Rihanna has commanded it!
If you ready to move say it (Yeah Yeah)No! Say, "It!"
One time for your mind say it (Yeah Yeah)"Is it a code?"
Well i'm ready for yaI like how she can just drop Ibo words into the middle of a sentence and still land a major record deal.
Come let me show ya
You want to groove im'a show you how to move
Come come
[Hook x2:]This is the point that I realized that something was wrong with her. She has now asked for the DJ to turn the music up, by my count, 8 times. She also has asked the DJ if he can hear him twice. It seems to me that there is a good chance that the DJ can't hear her because the music is so loud at this point, and she still has a hard time hearing it. I think that maybe Rihanna has ruptured her eardrums, and should have her ears tested by a licensed audiologist. I did that once last year. The wife of one of my friends was training to be a speech pathologist and was giving free ear exams. I found out that I am partially deaf in my left ear (I can't hear high tones). On a sort of related note, yesterday the guy who put tubes in my ears when I was in 1st grade died. I don't remember the tubes being put in, but I remember him putting me on my back in his office and reaching in and unsuccessfully trying to pry them out of my head without anesthesia. I have mixed feelings about what happened.
Come Mr. DJ song pon de replay
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
All the gyal pon the dancefloor wantin some more what
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
[B-Sec x2:]
Hey Mr.
Please Mr. DJ
Tell me if you hear me
Turn the music up
[Verse 2:]Wait a sec...this is verse one!
It goes 1 by 1 even 2 by 2
Everybody in the club gon be rockin when i'm throughAre we running in place? This isn't a dance club. This is Jazzercizing! I expect that Richard Simmons is going to come flouncing out and say, "C'mon girls! Keep it up!"
Let the bass from the speakers run through ya sneakers
Move both ya feet and run to the beat
[Hook x2:]
Come Mr. DJ song pon de replay
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
All the gyal pon the dancefloor wantin some more what
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
[B-Sec x2:]
Hey Mr.
Please Mr. DJ
Tell me if you hear me
Turn the music up
[x4]Now, if I have gotten down, home can I put my hands up on the ceiling? Your Sisyphean groove is cruel and, by my calculation, now officially lasts longer than the current age of the universe.
Okay everybody get down if you feel me
Put your hands up to the ceiling
[Hook x2:]I don't know why you are saying "Mr. DJ." Chances are the DJ is some pimply high schooler making minimum wage for some mobile DJ service. Take it from me, a former pimply high schooler making minimum wage for some mobile DJ service, if he has to hear your damned refrain one more time...well, you know how prom ends in Carrie, right?
Come Mr. DJ song pon de replay
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
All the gyal pon the dancefloor wantin some more what
Come Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up
Rick Warren's Saddleback Church is bleeding money. He just sent out a letter begging for almost a million dollars from his followers.
With 10% of our church family out of work due to the recession, our expenses in caring for our community in 2009 rose dramatically while our income stagnated. Still, with wise management, we've stayed close to our budget all year. Then... this last weekend the bottom dropped out.
On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive - leaving us $900,000 in the red for the year, unless you help make up the difference today and tomorrow.
Good.
I don't mean that it is good that people are poor and suffering; I think it's wonderful that a pious fraud who preys upon them is feeling a teeny-tiny pinch. I'd feel even more cheerful if I didn't think that his begging from the faithful will most likely work.
Hey, if anyone wants to see me go into raptures, all they have to do is add to Saddleback's woes by making their fleecing operation taxable. That would definitely break the back of Saddleback.
Read the comments on this post...I keep hearing people telling me this, but at the same time I keep seeing more and more out atheists, and atheism becoming more and more popular. The refrain is sounding more desperate than accurate — but then, among people for whom wishful thinking is tantamount to a mathematical proof, I suppose just wanting atheism to go away is sufficient to mean it must be going away. I was sent an awesomely pathetic article making just this same kind of weak argument.
There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble.
"Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.
His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.
Quoting a few of the usual suspects does not mean you've got a "growing consensus". I don't even know what "atheism as a theoretical position" means — it could imply that atheism is so dominant that it is taken for granted. As for McGrath…sorry, vacuous, mealy-mouthed, and boring are not sufficient qualities to make one an authority. Again, though, I have no idea what he is talking about — of course atheism is a private or personal belief, and what the heck does it mean for atheism to have inhabited the public domain without being part of individual beliefs? These guys are just stringing words together and pretending to be authoritative.
Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.
One: atheism is retaining its scientific basis. I think the authors comment is a veiled and credulous reference to the common claim by intelligent design creationists that they have scientific evidence of a creator. They do not.
Atheism has never claimed to hold the moral high ground; that's religion's schtick. What we have going on right now is growing evidence that religion does not confer morality, either.
This article started stupid, but it just gets worse and worse. Guess who they cite to back up the above claims?
Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, "Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance."
When did Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar get promoted to philosopher? More appropriate descriptors would be convicted con artist and former mental patient.
We also get senile philosophers pontificating on biology.
As British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as any, mused when turning his back on his former belief: It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.
But we can account for all that data: accumulated variation for a few billion years will do the job. What is so hard to understand about this?
Other tropes in this amazingly dumb article include the imminent demise of atheism. I think Darwinism and atheism must be in a race to be first to collapse, contradicted only by the fact that both seem to be growing stronger day by day.
The stunning desertion of a former intellectual ambassador of secular humanism to the belief in some form of intelligence behind the design of the universe makes Yahya's prediction sound probable: "The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world."
Oh, and of course we have to have science backing theistic claims, with citations of a science journal.
A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the United States - for example, at Harvard and Duke universities - showed a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200 studies at research centers around the world have come to similar conclusions, according to "Psychologie Heute," a German journal, citing, for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in Germany's Ruhr District due to "spiritual resources."
Wait…the studies that showed no statistically significant effect are now being used to endorse prayer? O Topsy Turvy world!
I was amused by the citation to that prestigious medical journal, "Psychologie Heute". That's German for Psychology Today, by the way, and the German edition is just like the American one: mass market pop psychology sold at your local supermarket checkout line.
It's just sad that theists are reduced to this kind of feeble justification for their goofy beliefs.
Read the comments on this post...
Christian fundamentalist and young earth creationist John Freshwater was fired yesterday. He is no longer a public school teacher. His school board voted to fire him. Good riddance.
Supporters of John Freshwater stood in a parking lot yesterday asking God to inspire the school board to make the right decision.
Three hours later, the board announced that it intends to fire Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher.
Freshwater preached his Christian beliefs about how the world began, discredited evolution and didn't teach the required science curriculum, the board says. He was told to stop teaching creationism and intelligent design, but he continued to do so, an investigation found.
I’ve posted on John Freshwater several times.
Chalk one up for common sense. This guy is a loon.
Lawrence Krauss says “forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be here today”:
He calls himself a bishop, that should have been the first warning sign. Defrocked catholic priest turned pastor/bishop Anthony Garduno was arrested Thursday on suspicion of selling meth from his church and sexually abusing a teen.
Anthony Garduno, 51, was arrested Tuesday morning at his Home Gardens church by Riverside County sheriff's investigators after a search of Garduno's church turned up evidence that he was selling methamphetamine there, according to a sheriff's news release.
Sheriff's investigators also found evidence that Garduno, who lived at the church, may have committed sexual assaults there, according to the news release.
The police went after Garduno after a man came forward alleging he had been sexually abused by Garduno while a teen. Police found evidence that suggests there may be more victims. Will Bingham of the Contra Costa times reports that “Sheriff's investigators have urged Garduno's other alleged sexual assault victims to contact them at 951-951-2600.”
Investigators report finding evidence that Garduno engaged in sexual activity in the church, along with evidence that may suggest illicit use of GHB.
Garduno’s alleged victims were Spanish speaking young men. In other cases like this one when minority communities are involved, victims often do not go to report abuse to authorities. This case could get ugly.
A parent in the Issaquah School District in King County, Washington requested that the school board eliminate the Pledge of Allegiance from their regular business meetings.
“It is inappropriate for the school board to ask atheists to stand and proclaim they are ‘under God,’” said [Matthew] Barry, a self-proclaimed atheist. “Atheists don’t believe in gods, so they certainly don’t think they or the nation are under a god.”
…
“It’s none of the government’s business what our private religious beliefs are, if any, and certainly none of the government’s business to ask us to stand and publicly proclaim what those beliefs are,” he added. “Most would agree it’s even worse if the government asks someone to stand and say something that contradicts their belief system.”
And, not surprisingly, the article quotes someone who has no clue what he’s talking about:
“If I understand his logic correctly, simply because something is offensive and unnecessary, it should be removed,” said Jared Spataro, a parent and Boy Scout Leader whose Scouts presented the colors that night.
…
“I understand many things we do are offensive to people,” Spataro added. “But just because a small group of people, or even a large group of people, are offended it doesn’t mean they are right.”
Spataro doesn’t understand his logic correctly.
Offensive is ok. Let people be challenged. But to proclaim we’re a nation under a god violates the idea of church/state separation. It’s unconstitutional. That’s why it’s wrong. End of story.
No word on whether the school board will change their ways.
Unfortunately, I’m not hopeful.
But kudos to Matthew Barry for being the voice of reason. It’d be nice if others knew their history as well as he does.
Two distressing news stories out of that wealthy western state:
Berkeley High School has a serious problem: it's a good, relatively well-funded school, but black and latino students aren't doing as well as white students. Their solution: kill those expensive science labs and redirect the money to remedial classes. Science classes with no labs? Inconceivable! That's what a body of earnest, well-meaning, and apparently scientifically illiterate parents and teachers have decided to do.
You cannot learn about science without doing science. It's like deciding to continue to teach theater and music, but without that troubling and time-consuming business of performing. Or like having a football program that never plays any games (I know, that one is pure fantasy…discontinuing a football team is much, much harder than simply shutting down teaching labs).
I'm also surprised at the casual bigotry in the proposal. Demolishing their science program won't hurt black and Latino students? Right. When I taught at Temple University, the biology labs were full of ambitious black students scrambling to pick up those essential, basic lab skills that they needed to be doctors and nurses someday…skills that were not taught in the impoverished urban schools of North Philadelphia. Is Berkeley training their minority students to be part of the cutting edge of science and technology and medicine, or are they more interested in turning out service workers for Taco Bell?
Here's another tricky situation: the California Science Center is being sued for turning away the showing of an intelligent design creationism movie. It's a tough case, because public institutions should be interested in presenting arguments for issues in science — even if it is a controversial story, the answer to abuses of free speech is more free speech.
However, there are other parts of this story that mean I can't just jerk the ol' free speech knee. One key point is that what the movie was presenting was not a scientific controversy at all—seriously, any movie that tries to present the Cambrian as a serious problem that makes evolution impossible is celluloid trash. Because the venue can be leased should not imply that the CSC is open to anyone showing home movies, or to the latest porn impresario from the San Fernando Valley using it for the premiere of his latest flick. I would think a science center would have a vested interest in protecting its reputation for showing science.
And of course, the creationists know about that reputation. That's why they try to book prestigious places of science, like the Smithsonian, your local museum, or as we see all the time at the University of Minnesota, the physics auditorium, to show off their bogosity in the reflected luster of science. The reverse is also true: scientists don't rush to unveil their latest discovery at the nearby church.
The science center also had clear grounds for canceling the showing: the creationists tried to imply in promotions that the movie showing was a Smithsonian-endorsed event, which it was not — they were merely a gang of bozos who had the cash to lease the room. The center also had a clause in their agreement to prevent that kind of credibility-theft, requiring promotional materials to be screened before release.
It's all part of a growing problem: creationists know that their institutions have no scientific credibility at all, and they desperately want to borrow some authority for their lies from real science.
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