Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XX

Machine Gun Keyboard‘s take on World Youth Day

The week in fundie . . .

1. Three years after Campus Crusade for Christ spammed the incoming mail of Australian school principals with the creationist propaganda DVD The Privileged Planet, Focus on the Family is doing the same in New Zealand. But whereas the then Australian Education Minister Brendan Nelson welcomed the prospect of creationism being taught in Australian schools “if that is the wish of parents,” the New Zealand Education ministry maintains “the theory of evolution underpins the science curriculum and schools have a responsibility to teach theories that are subject to accepted scientific scrutiny.” According to the NZ Christian newspaper Weekly Challenge, The Discovery Institute’s Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez (authors of The Privileged Planet) will be conducting a speaking tour of that country in October and November to, as the paper puts it, “strengthen our belief in an intelligent and amazing Designer.” Not that Intelligent Design has anything to do with religion, you understand. (Via Pharyngula)
2. In Ghana, 34-year-old Yussif Abdullarahman killed one of his wives by hitting her on the head with a blunt object and pouring acid over her body because, as he claimed, “she was a witch.” (Happy 98.9 FM)
3. In the Indian state of Jharkand, three members of a family were beaten to death with bamboo sticks and iron rods after being accused of practising witchcraft. According to Thaiindian News, “over 700 people, mostly women, have been killed over the past few years in Jharkhand after being branded as witches.”
4. The Anti-Christ will be a German Jew, according to UK Pentecostalist sect RedSky Ministries.

Short story: Franz Kafka, “Before The Law”

Before the law sits a gatekeeper . . . (Image: Sony Pictures)

It has been a while since I’ve posted one of these. “Before The Law” comprises part of the penultimate chapter of The Trial, though an extant form was published during Kafka’s lifetime. It is said that Kafka used to laugh hysterically when reading The Trial to his friends, and this makes me wonder whether “Before The Law” inspired the great Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant.” In both cases, for example, the protagonists are being denied access to a place they are completely free not to attempt to enter; when they inquire as to whether it is possible to enter, Kafka’s gatekeeper replies “It is possible [. . .] but not now,” while Seinfeld‘s maître d’ repeatedly assures them they will be waiting “5, 10 minutes,” regardless of how much time has actually passed; and both protagonists try unsuccessfully to bribe the gatekeeper/maître d’, though their gifts are accepted. Read the story, watch “The Chinese Restaurant” (if you have it on DVD/VHS) and see what you think.

The following translation is courtesy of Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, British Columbia:

Isn’t there a statute of limitations on memes?

Because this one (via Bruce) has been in circulation for months. Turn to page 123 of the book nearest to you and write out the 5th sentence. Repeat this instruction to any forwardees, should you choose to participate.

The closest book at this point in time is Franz Kafka: The Complete Novels. And here’s p. 123, sentence 5:

But the doorkeeper is bound to his post by his very office, he does not dare strike out into the country, nor apparently may he go into the interior of the Law, even should he wish to.

That’s from the gatekeeper parable that the priest relates to K in the penultimate chapter of The Trial. An extant form of the parable was published as a short story, “Before the Law.” Mikey should appreciate it, given his line of work. 🙂

I’m a little reluctant to forward this meme, given how long it has been floating around, but I tag The Lazy Aussie and Clare.

Mashup: Intelligent design creationism vs. Dr Seuss

(Click image to see the slideshow)

Genius. Via Pharyngula.

Meet Clare at Rantspace

Clare linked to me from a post in which she had some interesting things to say about skepticism, and about which I’ll say a bit more shortly. But she has a far more pressing and harrowing tale to tell about her experiences as a victim of clergy sexual abuse, experiences which have not caused her to reject theism, but which have heightened her awareness of the dark places that religion mixed with authoritarianism can lead. I encourage you to read it.

Towards the end of her narrative, Clare mentioned coming “from a long line of family with psychic ability,” and that might explain her position on skepticism. She divides skeptics into two camps: “There are those who debunk claims of the “miraculous” by finding and offering a rational scientific explanation, and there are those who debunk any claim they don’t understand and/or that hasn’t been proven.” A truly enquiring mind, she argues, “will go looking for evidence both ways rather than either a) debunking or b) sitting back waiting for the proof to be handed to them.” Well, strictly-speaking the word debunking, a transitive verb meaning “to expose the sham or falseness of,” would only apply to the first kind of skepticism. I’m not sure that many the majority of skeptics would fall into the second camp (just as I doubt that the majority of atheists would be strong atheists), but I gather Clare either has had, or believes she has had experience of such individuals.

I don’t think that there is much Clare says in this post or in the comment thread that I would disagree with. I agreed with her that if we are presented with a phenomena and a claim of supernatural causation for said phenomena, we ought not to dismiss the phenomena out of hand. (I think I’ve heard Joe Nickell, a skeptical investigator of the paranormal, express a similar view on the Point of Inquiry podcast.) But we are under no obligation to accept the claim of supernatural causation if the claimant has not provided sufficient supporting evidence.

Anyway, have a look at what Clare has to say about skepticism yourself. As for you, Clare, welcome to my blogroll.

What does Young-Earth Creationism have to do with the Apology to the Stolen Generations?

According to John Stear of No Answers in Genesis, Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International has claimed that his organisation is in possession of an 8-page draft of the Apology to the Stolen Generations tabled in Parliament by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In an article in which he also lauds the denialism of Andrew Bolt on this issue, Wieland claims that the draft contains the following paragraph, excised from the final version of the speech:

‘Prior to 1861, missionaries were prepared to accept according to the principles of their religions, that Aboriginal people were every bit as capable as Europeans. But with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origins [sic] of the Species in 1859, a new theory starts to take hold and the conception that Aboriginal people are a “disappearing race” starts to take hold in Australian public life. This had equally catastrophic consequences for Aboriginal people and communities.’

Wieland celebrates this passage as supporting the Biblical view that “we are all made in God’s image,” against the “Darwinist” view that “some [humans] must be more ‘highly evolved’ than others.” But he also bemoans, for obvious reasons, a reference to “over 50,000 years of Aboriginal wisdom and knowledge that has never been properly acknowledged or understood by Australian governments,” describing this statement as “inherent[ly] racis[t].”

Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XIX

The week in fundie . . .

1. Religion as child abuse: members of a religious cult known as the Grail Movement kept a seven-year-old boy “chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat.” The Grail Movement makes the Manson family sound like the Hanson family: in 2000, its spiritual leader Jiří Adam “had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties.” Detectives compared the victims to Auschwitz inmates. (Via Pharyngula)
2. Anti-gay activist and quack Paul Cameron is in Russia to support the local authorities’ crackdown on gay rights marches, and welcomes the embrace of his ideas by the sociology department at Moscow State University, a school which has
   

   distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.

   (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)

3. The Bilerico Project reports on a gay rights supporter who collapsed at a demonstration outside San Francisco’s City Hall–to the cheers of a group of loving Christian anti-gay protestors, one of whom was chanting “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear?” (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Father Thomas Williams

Okay, I’ll bite. The man is a liar and a blowhard. A strawman-builder from the get-go:

“Though the atheists claim to represent the side of reason,” he asserts in his book, “their arguments more often than not are ideological rather than rational.”

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. Period. If that’s all it takes to constitute an ideology, then not collecting stamps is an ideology. (Aphilatelism?)

Williams has joined the ranks of fleas with an anti-atheist tome entitled Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God. Why does the world need this book? (That is, in addition to the plethora of recent releases with the same Christian apologist/anti-atheist agenda?) Because there has been a “surge in neo-atheist literature” in recent times, with books by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens making the best-seller list, and as a consequence:

most people only hear one side of the story. They become indoctrinated with the atheistic arguments without ever hearing a reasoned response.

You have to ask yourself what parallel universe this guy is inhabiting, because he’s certainly absent from this one if he can utter the phrase “most people only hear one side of the story” with a straight face, given that he means “the ‘atheist’ side.” Actually, the problem is that, regarding belief and especially regarding non-belief, most people do only hear one side: and that is precisely what is prompting individual atheists, prominent and not-so-prominent, to speak out. Williams’ ridiculous statement reminds me of British Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s call for Christianity to be given unopposed air time on the BBC–anything less would be “Christophobic,” according to the Cardinal. Both men are either completely disconnected from reality, or telling lies.

Hey Ninglun! What’s the story?

UPDATE: False alarm . . . he was just redecorating.

More Strawmen than you think: Interview with Father Williams

Bruce and Mojoey are among those (I assume there are more) who have been contacted by publishers Hachette Group and offered the chance to review their anti-atheist book Greater Than You Think, by the Vatican’s Father Thomas D. Williams. There is an interview with Williams at Zenit.com. I’ll leave Bruce and Mojoey to look at it for now, though what it reveals is that what Mojoey, who has agreed to review the book, can expect is another dishonest exercise in broad-brush-stroking about atheists, based on a beef the author has with a certain Four Horsemen whose arguments he represents as standing in synecdochically for the beliefs of all atheists.

Any book which makes grandiose claims about “debunking” the “common fallacies perpetuated by atheism” needs to be read with a huge dose of salt, and that dose of salt is as follows. Atheism is a single position on a single question: “Do you believe in a god/gods?” (The atheist answer being “No.”) Any other claim about what all atheists believe, or what atheists in general believe, or what the majority of atheists believe, is likely to be a strawman, and should be treated like the dishonest rhetoric it plainly is. Unless, of course, the individual making the claim is prepared to substantiate it with sufficient evidence. If said individual is neither willing nor able to do so, he or she is a liar and a blowhard. Those aren’t simply ad hominems, by the way: they’re descriptive statements of fact. Furthermore, if the individual wielding strawmen happens to be a Roman Catholic priest, don’t be afraid to use that against him. Commandment number 8 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads as follows: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The Catechism continues: “The Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil: ‘You are of your father the devil, . . . there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.'”