On contraception and religious right troglodytes

Sometimes I think it's easier just to look forward and try to put behind us the regressive and ridiculous policies of the past decade, and especially social conservatism spearheaded by religious right troglodytes. However, we have to raise awareness of the real harm done by programs run by people like this. For example, in many nations, people are so poor they scavenge garbage dumps but are not given access to birth control (and are threatened with excommunication) because of the shameful and absurd Catholic Church. In Africa, millions are dying from AIDS and hunger but Bush's programs (for all the legacy spin) cause more death because they place all emphasis on "abstinence" and do not provide the sort of comprehensive sex ed and contraception options that are effective.

Bush appointed a birth control opponent to head the agency in charge of family planning: the Dept. of Health and Human Services. The religious right doesn't just want to prevent abortion. They want to control your reproductive rights. Specifically, they want to end all forms of birth control and there's a clear (although perhaps subconscious) reason why: religion is hereditary. The one surefire way to increase the number of parishioners in the church is to breed them. The church could care the less what quality life your children have -- that's between you and Jesus -- but they want to make sure you have children who are in the pews.

If the religious right was actually interested in human welfare, they'd support comprehensive sex ed and realize that countries with no reproductive rights are those with the highest rates of abortion. But they don't live in the reality-based community.

*UPDATE: Add another study to document the failure of "abstinence pledges" to do anything but increase STDs and teen pregnancies*

Xmas gifts for the crazy Christian you love

Ship of Fools presents great gifts for the religious nutcase in your life this holiday season. My favorite is their favorite (#1):

My parents would so put this in their yard.

Haggard floats back up

It's like a train wreck: you can't look away.

Since the guy fell from grace and his church took a huge hit, he just hasn't gone under; people with megalomania rarely do.

The waning Southern strategy

The NYT had a great front-page item today following up on what I wrote a few days ago about the (sad) role of Applachia in the election.

Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

They accompanied the analysis with a great graphic too:

Basically I would just say that I hope the party continues its slide into irrelevance and ignorance. Let the GOP be the party of the uneducated religious zealot, the bigoted redneck and the gun-crazed nutjob. According to Beliefnet, 52% of the anti-intellectual elements of the party (namely Evangelicals) apparently believed that Obama was a Muslim. Yet they still believe the media is ridiculously liberal, despite the media's inability to inform them of the basic fact of the President-elect's religion. Sad.

Frazer on "Christian Nation" nonsense

Arguments that purport to show that nearly all of the Founders of our nation were Evangelicals are based on bullsh*t. I've written before of the common rumors that float around in email chains (does everyone have a mother like mine, who forwards EVERY ridiculous email to you?). From a legal standpoint, it matters not one iota what the Founders believed, only what they wrote into the Constitution.

Anyway, Ed Brayton brings us a more accurate look at what the views of the Founders really were from Evangelical historian Greg Frazer: theistic rationalism.

Theistic rationalism was a hybrid belief system mixing elements of natural religion, Protestant Christianity, and rationalism – with rationalism as the decisive factor whenever conflict arose between the elements. Theistic rationalists believed that these three elements would generally be in accord and lead to the same end, but that reason was determinative on those relatively rare occasions in which there was disagreement. Rationalism as used here is the philosophical view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Educated in Enlightenment thought, theistic rationalists were at root rationalists, but their loosely Christian upbringing combined with reason to convince them that a creator God would not abandon his creation. Consequently, they rejected the absentee god of deism and embraced a theist God of, to a significant extent, their own construction. Hence the term theistic rationalism.

An emphasis on reason had long been accepted in the Christian community, but in Christian thought, reason was a supplement to revelation, which was supreme. Theistic rationalism turned this on its head and made revelation a supplement to reason. In fact, for theistic rationalists, reason determined what should be accepted as revelation from God. Unlike deists, theistic rationalists accepted the notion of revelation from God; unlike Christians, they felt free to pick apart the Bible and to consider only the parts which they determined to be rational to be legitimate divine revelation. They similarly felt free to define God according to the dictates of their own reason and to reject Christian doctrines which did not seem to them to be rational.

The God of the theistic rationalists was a unitary, personal God whose controlling attribute was benevolence. Theistic rationalists believed that God was present and active in the world and in the lives of men. Consequently, they believed in the efficacy of prayer – that someone was listening and might intervene on their behalf. Theistic rationalism was not a devotional or inward-looking belief system; it was centered on public morality. God was served by living and promoting a good, moral life. The primary value of religion was the promotion of morality, and the morality generated by religion was indispensable to a free society. Since all of the religions with which they were familiar promoted morality, they held that virtually all religions were more or less equally valid and led to the same God who is called by many names. Theistic rationalists generally disdained doctrines or dogmas. They found them to be divisive, speculative, and ultimately unimportant since many roads lead to God.

Interesting.

Time mag. asks, and I answer: Palin = disaster

Barack says that Bristol Palin's teenage pregnancy is off-limits:

MONROE, Michigan (CNN) – Barack Obama told reporters firmly that families are off-limits in this campaign, reacting to news that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.

“Let me be as clear as possible,” said Obama, “I think people’s families are off-limits and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.”

Obama said reporters should “back off these kinds of stories” and noted that he was born to an 18 year-old mother.

“How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off-limits.”

The Illinois senator became aggravated when asked about rumors on liberal blogs speculating that Palin’s fifth child - Trig - is actually her daughter Bristol’s. A Reuters report Monday quotes a senior McCain aide saying that Obama’s name is in some of posts, “in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their 'campaign of change,’”

“I am offended by that statement,” Obama shot back, not letting the reporter finish his question. “There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us.”

“We don’t go after people’s families,” Obama said. “We don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”

Although McCain's campaign insists that they knew about this, I remain skeptical, not the least reason being that they're now sending an army of lawyers to Alaska to try to contain this...which is something they should've done beforehand. Time magazine asks whether McCain's pick was "bold or disastrous?" I think that answer is becoming more clear. Let's have a run-down of the woman's baggage:

1. Late addition: She was a member of a fringe Alaskan political group that seeks its independence from the US, and was involved in their 2008 conference
   
2. Late addition: It looks like independent voters are seeing through the nonsense
   
3. She had a shotgun wedding as she got pregnant with her first kid out of wedlock
4. Her husband was arrested on a DWI
5. She's a staunch "abstinence-only" advocate whose teenage daughter got pregnant, the political fallout from which is still to be determined
   
6. Troopergate: She used her authority as governor to try to have her sister's ex-husband fired, then fired his boss when the boss refused, then lied about it [apparently the ex-husband was a dickhead, but the last two points are more important here]
7. She claimed in her first public appearance as VP candidate that she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere" but this turns out to be a lie, and a bad one, at that
8. She claims to have opposed corruption in Alaska, but said that calling for Ted Stevens resignation would be "premature" after his arrest and received his endorsement, which she paid to run as an ad
9. She directed Ted Stevens' 527 group on his behalf and appeared with him in July after his indictment to appeal for him politically
10. A few months ago, she claims to have no idea what the VP does everyday
    
11. In a 2006 gubenatorial questionaire, she said that she opposed abortions for incest and rape, only giving an exception if it could be proven that the mother might die from childbirth. The Religious Right loves her. Re-read that.
12. From the same source, and many others, she claims that teaching creationism in science classes is the way to go, "teach both."
    
13. On the same anti-science note, she is a global warming denialist
14. She is to the right of McCain on drilling in ANWR, protecting polar bears and protecting the environment in general (yet another anti-science Republican)
15. On the same line of reasoning, she semi-opposed the surge in Iraq, hailed as one of the only things that McCain has not failed at in the past decade or so
16. There is zero national security experience involved in being governor, so quit repeating the "commander-in-chief of the national guard" line. Campbell Brown stumped Tucker Bounds today (H/T: Kos) who tried to equivocate on this -- she didn't command troops to go to Iraq. Not even close. I'm the "commander-in-chief" of my classroom, but that doesn't make me an education policy wonk.
    
17. She is clearly and unequivocally unqualified to be president should something happen to McCain, the oldest presidential candidate ever nominated for a first term whose four bouts with cancer should make everyone think twice

Go Obama-Biden '08! (pic source)

17 yo unwed Bristol Palin is pregnant

Bristol Palin is five months pregnant. The McCain camp claims they knew...

...great judgment, McCain ;-)

In seriousness, I read the rumors that she (rather than her mom) had been pregnant with Trig with a lot of skepticism but a little bit of hope from a purely political perspective: I thought that such a scandal would be good for November. After talking to a friend of mine, I started to realize that the RR would just say, "It's better than an abortion." The same probably applies here.

The absurd policies of the Religious Right bear rotten fruit: 1 in 4 teenage girls who are sexually active have at least one STD. The rates of teen pregnancy are rising again after years of decline during the Clinton years with comprehensive sex ed. There's also a sad race gap: more than one half of black girls have one, compared to only 20% of whites and Latinos. The teenagers themselves aren't in the least surprised. See this or this piece of mine for more stats related to "abstinence only" education and abortions.

See this excellent item on the RR's policies of "marriage promotion" as well.

A few notes apropos politics and religion

There's been quite a reaction to Stuart Shepard's most recent stupid video for the FOF nuts.

Anyone who Rod Parsley is against, I'm likely for.

The Matthew 25 group has released a nice, positive video supporting Obama and highlighting his strength on family issues...you know, actual family issues, like education and health care, not just being rabidly anti-gay...

Obama leads amongst every class of religious voters besides white Evangelicals.

What a relief! Biblical "experts" (as if such a thing is possible or needed) on the apocalypse have finally decided that Obama isn't the Anti-Christ.

A win for sound science education! Californians don't have to dumb down their university academic standards to appease creationists.

Roy Moore may be one-upped by the idiot judge in Alabama who used his courtroom to invoke others to pray...

Copeland continues to stonewall Congress

The investigation of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) into the tax-free practices of some religious organizations turned up a few rocks, and some especially slimy creatures are scurrying away from the harsh sunlight:

Already a well-known figure, Copeland has come under greater scrutiny in recent months. He is one target of a Senate Finance Committee investigation into allegations of questionable spending and lax financial accountability at six large televangelist organizations that preach health-and-wealth theology.

All have denied wrongdoing, but Copeland has fought back the hardest, refusing to answer most questions from the inquiry's architect, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.
...
Swicegood said the church's independent compensation committee approves all payments to board members.

Marilyn Phelan, a Texas Tech University law professor and author on nonprofit law, said the practice could pose problems. Both the IRS and Texas state law prohibit benefits beyond reasonable compensation for insiders, including board members, she said. If violations are found, nonprofits can lose their tax-exempt status and board members can face penalty taxes.

As the Senate Finance Committee considers its next step, Copeland is not backing down. His ministry is portraying the inquiry as an attack on religious liberty.

At the same time, it is moving forward with a big fund-raising project: soliciting donations for new television equipment so Copeland can be broadcast in high-definition.

I'd love to see this crook thrown in jail, but it's enough to hope for all the money he's misused to be taxed. From their supposed needs for private jets to their staying in $5,000 a night resorts during "evangelistic trips" and driving Bentleys that they write off as "work-related vehicles"...it all just makes me sick. Paula and Randy White have probably cooperated more than anyone else, but with their ongoing divorce and financial issues, it's understandable that they can't take any more heat.

Snake handling

They busted some KY pastor for having about 100 rattlesnakes in his home, which were typically used in Sunday worshipservices, on some kind of wildlife charges (possessing illegal reptiles??).

Isn't it funny how absurd the logic is: true believers handle snakes. If you are a true believer and take up snakes, they won't hurt you. When people who've done this for a while die or get hurt, this doesn't disprove our contention. Instead, this proves those people weren't true believers!

Lovely!

It reminds me of the claim that Christians won't sin, or believers can't fall away, or etc.: unfalsifiable circular logic.

LTE in The State re "I Believe" plates

There is a great LTE in The State today opposing the unconstitutional "I Believe" plates, which I mentioned two months ago. (For more background, and you'll have to hold your nose as you visit the site, see this video.)

‘I Believe’ tags threaten religious freedom of all, Christians included

Having been a Presbyterian now for more than a decade, it is also out of my Baptist roots that I continue a lifelong commitment to religious liberty and its corollary, the separation of church and state. It was that itinerant Baptist preacher John Leland who was most instrumental in solidifying the views of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in assuring our well-being and posterity for what Jefferson later described as “the wall of separation” between church and state.

When the General Assembly passed the religious license plate bill and the governor allowed it to become law without his signature, some proponents acknowledged it would be challenged in court. And I commend the clergymen who are the plaintiffs — United Methodist Tom Summers, Unitarian Neal Jones, Jewish Rabbi Sanford Marcus and First Christian Church pastor Robert Knight.

For government to issue religious license plates is clearly unconstitutional. It is contrary to the First Amendment’s establishment clause that prohibits government from advancing or endorsing any religion, be it Christianity, Hinduism, Buddism, Islam or any other. There is no majoritarian exception.

Religious liberty means that each person can become an adherent to the faith of his or her choosing, or can choose not to be a believer. It means that the religious experience is between God and the human heart and mind. It means that faith never can be coerced, as well-meaning as government, the church, the synagogue, the temple or the mosque may be.

We don’t look to government for permission to believe, nor is it government’s prerogative to approve or disapprove our practice. Government is without competence in religious matters.

We are free to put personal religious decals on our vehicles. We are free to put religious symbols in our yards or our businesses. We are free to witness to our faith in the public square as long as we are not disruptive (e.g., a student cannot disrupt the teaching process in a public school classroom).

There are some who seek unconstitutionally to draw government into the most sacred precincts of our being. Some would see this as a means to curry favor with certain voters.

But as South Carolinians with deep individual faith or with no religious faith, let us never trample the freedoms that have made us unique, especially the freedom to worship. I will continue to “render” to both God and Caesar. May government and religion remain ever separate. This is best for both.

FLYNN HARRELL

Columbia

Well-spoken. See AU and this item for more.

Stats on sliding Evangelicalism

I'm just not hopeful enough to conclude that the new book by Christine Wicker, The Fall of the Evangelical Church, is anything but hyperbolic and premature in its proclamation. However, she does have some neat stats on her website which support her thesis, which I'll copy the text of below the fold.

I was talking to my dad the other day about how the Southern Baptists always over-report their membership b/c if you're ever baptized in their church, you're on the books as a "member" for life.

In addition, the stats I've compiled on atheism, the new Paul and Zuckerman article and the recent Pew Poll reports are handy references.

A preview of statistics showing the evangelical slide
06/13/2008

The 25 percent of Americans who say they are evangelicals don’t go to church as evangelicals are expected to, don’t act as evangelicals are expected to, and don’t believe as evangelicals are expected to.

So are they evangelicals? No. Not in any way that would justify their dominance in national discussions of ethical and moral values.

Other Christians (67 percent of the population) outnumber traditionalist evangelicals (12.7) by more than five to one, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Study )

HOW MANY EVANGELICALS ARE THERE?

The most commonly heard statistic about evangelicals is that they are 25 percent of the country, one out of four Americans. That stat comes from what Americans say about their religious practice, which is notoriously unreliable.

In fact, traditionalist evangelicals are 7 percent of the population or 1 out of 14 Americans. Only 7 percent of self-identified evangelicals believe the most central tenets of so-called Bible-based belief and fewer than 7 percent are in church on a given Sunday.

A look at the National Association of Evangelicals and Southern Baptists, the two biggest evangelical groups, shows how inflated the commonly quoted figures are.

The NAE claims to have 30 million members. I counted. It actually has 7.6 million, at most, and perhaps half that actually attend church.

Southern Baptists claim to have 16 million members, but more than five million of those don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.

Five million are actually in church on average and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)

ARE THEY GROWING?

*The percentage of Americans who are evangelicals has been dropping since 1900 when they constituted 42 percent of the population.

*About a thousand evangelicals leave the faith every day.

*The proportion of young American adults who are evangelicals has declined from 22 percent in the 1970s to 20 percent in 2002.

*The percentage of young adult evangelicals who are Biblical literalists (about 55 percent) and has not increased since 1984.

*Most evangelical teens leave church after high school. Southern Baptists lose 88 percent. The Church of Christ loses up to 80 percent. Only 12 percent ever return. Other evangelicals estimate up to 94 percent leave within two years after finishing high school.

*In the country’s most successful churches, 1 out of 4 evangelicals is dissatisfied with the spiritual nourishment and growth provided in their churches. Many are considering leaving.

And that’s not the worst of it, the most dissatisfied are core members who give the most time and money to the church. Without them, the churches could not survive.

Southern Baptists are by far the largest evangelical denomination and the largest group of Protestants in the country. The following statistics came from them.

* Their rate of growth has been falling since the 1950s. (SBC researcher Thom Rainer has put out a graph that shows a diagonal line going straight down.) This means they haven’t resurged at all. They’ve grown but less each year. Try to sell that kind of performance on Wall Street.

* Southern Baptists say they more than 16 million members, but more than five million of them (some say 8 million) don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.

*Five million are actually in church on average I got those figures because they estimate that one out eight people in church is unsaved and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)

*Total baptisms have fallen for seven years out of eight. Last year they fell more than 5 percent.

*Half of the denomination’s 43,000 churches baptize 3 or fewer persons a year.

* Baptisms are falling in every age group except children under five.

*From 1980 to 2005, baptisms among the critical 18 to 34 age group fell 40 percent, from 100,000 to 60,000.

*Only 7 percent of those baptized have grown up without church or in a non-Christian family. At the same time, Americans who say they have no institutional affiliation is growing faster than any other spiritual group. (I have figures.) That means the pool that SBC is least able to tap is growing hugely.

*Total membership went down by 40,000 from 2006 to 2007.

*Members are less dedicated. In 1991, 85 percent of Southern Baptists attended worship and Sunday School. In 2006, the number was down to 68 percent.

* Southern Baptists are establishing churches at half the rate they did in the 1950s. That’s very bad news because a new church attracts new members at twice the rate a three-year-old church does and three times the rate of a 15-year-old church.

DO THEY ACT AS EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO ACT?

*From sexual behavior to abortion, from divorce to drug taking, the behavior of self-identified evangelicals is almost identical to the rest of the country.

DO THEY BELIEVE AS TRADITIONAL EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO BELIEVE?

When evangelical pollster George Barna asked nine questions of faith that characterize evangelical belief, he found that only 7 percent of the country qualified. When he went to cities, he couldn’t find one city where one out of four people were evangelicals.

The other 18 percent of Americans who are so often characterized as evangelicals are “self-identified” evangelicals. When pollsters ask them more than their religious affiliation, that number starts to drop. Because this is a very mixed group.

What does this mean politically?

It tells us why only 20 percent of self-identified evangelicals say they are members of the Religious Right. (Because it’s the truth.)

It tells us why James Dobson said he would sit out the election if McCain was the Republican nominee, and then when his bluff was called, decided that he would reconsider. (Because he isn’t the kingmaker he styles himself to be.)

It tells us why abortion is still legal and gay rights are being extended more each year. After more than 20 years of fighting these issues, Religious Right evangelicals haven’t been able to legislate their core issues. They can swing an election but they don’t have enough people to make unpopular laws.

It tells us that McCain must keep his 7 percent base awake and afraid enough to vote but he won’t court them too much for fear of alienating the rest of America, including the 18 percent evangelical swing vote that has been lumped with the Religious Right. Obama has a good chance at that swing vote, which is made up of nominal evangelicals, cultural conservatives and increasingly progressive “emergent church” evangelicals.

He does indeed. McCain has problems there, although people like Dobson will go wherever they still have control.

Two funny irreverent things

Okay, so when the huge spawn of twisters killed lots of people throughout the SE, and when a huge spawn of twisters killed lots of people in KS and AL, I asked for some logical consistency: the fat self-righteous religious right kooks needed to step up to the plate and claim that God hates TN, or KS, or AL...just as they did when Katrina hit LA. Finally, someone has stepped up to the plate, blaming Iowa for God's wrath -- Jason Werner. PS: See this take-down at the Secular Philosophy blog of arguments based on the idea that God sends wrath down on specific locales when God gets pissed.

See this hilarious spoof of Expelled, just substitute Intelligent Design Creationism for Astrology and Biology for Astronomy and you get the joke:

The joke that is political news

Ok, so I said a while back that the whole "liberal media" thing was getting old. Although one of the issues was brought a little balance, you saw very little looping of the audio or Youtube videos of Hagee on evening newscasts. This is what motivates me to derisively refer to the term, and supports my contention that the media is hardly interested in "helping" Obama. As of now, it's just a joke to pretend that he is a "media darling" as some claim. (report)

In effectively clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama survived late firestorms of news coverage about his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which was by far the dominant media story of the entire campaign, according to an independent research organization.

The story of Wright and his race-based rants against United States policies surfaced in March and received four times more coverage than any other theme or event throughout the campaign, according to data compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington. The issue undercut Obama with working-class white voters in the later primaries, most analysts have said.

Over the last five months of the campaign through June 1, Obama received significantly more news coverage than the other candidates. He was a major figure in 63.5 percent of campaign stories, compared with 54 percent for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who started the contest last year as the odds-on favorite. Both Democrats received more than double the coverage accorded presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who was a prime subject in 26 percent of stories, the survey also found.

No other story line came close to attracting as much coverage as the Wright-Obama association, and most of it was negative. The nonpartisan project monitored and coded about 300 to 400 campaign stories per week in nearly 50 news media outlets, including newspapers, broadcast and cable television, radio, and Internet news sites, tracking campaign stories in which the candidates received at least 25 percent of the print space or broadcast time.

Yeah...real "liberal media" for you. Excellence in journalism. It's time for "silly season" in campaign coverage to be over; we need journalism that does justice to the gravity of the issues that our country and our world are facing. See the whole report for more.

*Oh, and not that this joke qualifies as a journalist, but he does reveal the paucity of tools in the GOP toolbox: Red Scare is still one of the few.*

On a more positive note, let's hope Obama shows 'em all and gets 40% of the Evangelical vote, as per RR flack Mark DeMoss.

*Check out the remix of 2Pac and Nas about Obama*

Kennedy's parishoners on threats to faith & anti-intellectualism

D. James Kennedy, who I love to critique, had his church vote on perceived spiritual "threats" in our country. I was amazed to see the list:

How dangerous are the following to the spiritual health of America?

	Very	Somewhat	Not very
The ACLU and similar groups	96	3	1
Pro-homosexual indoctrination	95	4	1
Abortion	93	6	1
Islamic terrorism	91	8	1
Hollywood	89	10	1
News Media	87	12	1
Darwinism/evolution	85	14	1
Cults and false religion	82	16	2
Atheism	82	16	2
Courts	81	18	1
Apathetic/uninformed Christians	79	20	1
Colleges and Universities	78	21	1
Public education (K-12)	69	29	2
Congress	63	35	2

As PZ joked, we "very dangerous" atheists are slacking off if we're way down at #9 below teh gayz. Now, the comment I want to make is especially directed towards "colleges and universities" as well as "public education"...

While there can be no doubt that there is a certain anti-intellectual crowd within the faith community, I would by no means suggest that this is the "best" crowd. In fact, while it may or may not be a plurality, such a group would probably be the rural, uneducated religious follower rather than a smart and sophisticated believer with apologetic resources. *UPDATE: A new study is underway at BU to gauge and improve the image of Evangelical scholarship and to highlight the existence of the Evangelical intelligentsia. Groups like Kennedy's here do this study no favors.*

I've pointed out before that I think the IQ issue doesn't work when comparing believers to non-believers: I think it's bunk. So let's clearly set aside questions of intelligence and focus on the question of education (not one and the same).

First, the facts show that getting a college education does not lead to a loss of religious belief in general. At best, it may lead to a large percentage of students changing religious affiliation and/or becoming more generous with their orthodoxy.

Second, while faculty at universities tend to be far less likely to be "born again" or Evangelical-types, 4 in 5 describe themselves as "spiritual" and so it's factually false to say that most professors are materialistic atheists.

Third, it is crystal clear that the younger generation is trending towards nonreligious attitudes.

What sorts of conclusions can we draw from these facts? It seems that both educated and uneducated younger people are trending away from organized religion. However, there is still a clear aversion to self-identify as an atheist, and it doesn't seem that we can blame universities and colleges for the trend.

My interpretation is that basically, the anti-intellectual sentiment expressed by the average believer is more a reflection of attitude towards arrogance and self-reliance, perceived effects of education, than actually believing that education is evil or wrong. While majors in the sciences certainly seem to believe in God far less than other people, perhaps cause/effect should be investigated there: consider the possibility that people majoring in the sciences are skeptical by nature. Therefore, all the repeated studies (including these) which have shown that fewer than 50% of scientists believe in God, that more than 60% are atheists and agnostics, that belief in God among "elite scientists" (NAS Members) is a mere 7%, and that 95% of NAS biologists are either atheists or agnostics, can't be blamed on science itself.

See:
1) SciAm Article 1999
2) Nature 1997

Ask yourself this: why is it that people who have to think logically to survive in their careers, to depend upon evidence and critical inquiry, are much more likely to reject the God hypothesis? Pride? You can see it that way, I suppose, if you want. But doesn't that imply that science itself is prideful, in saying that we ought to use our brains and the best evidence available to establish knowledge and valid beliefs? If that's pride, call me the devil, I guess...

I think that people who are drawn to science are people who are analytically-oriented and skeptically-minded by nature. We're the types who want evidence and logical arguments to persuade us. Perhaps we can simply be viewed with equity by those unlike us, and learn to view them likewise, rather than elevating ourselves unduly because of our genetically or environmentally-determined natures, which we cannot ourselves claim credit for. And perhaps others (believers) can stop denigrating us unduly for the same reason; skeptics may be hardwired for skepticism.

McCain now rejects Parsley as well as Hagee

Retraction: my whining about how the supposedly liberal media made no attempt to strike balance between Obama's former pastor and the radicals that McSame sought out endorsements from is now officially rescinded. Now, McBush is backing away from crazy Hagee & Parsley. Try your best.

It was a big day for backtracking:

• McCain rejects Hagee, 4:00 PM
  
• Hagee says, "screw you" in reply, 5:00 PM
  
• McCain rejects Parsley, 10:38 PM
• *update: Parsley withdraws endorsement, Sat AM*
  

Keep in mind this all comes after being asked by Snuffleupagus and by Bill Bennett about whether he knew of Hagee's radical views on the Catholic Church and Judaism generally. McCain was cool with him then.

There's your "straight talker"...

Virginia follows Texas with NCBCPS

A year ago to the day, I reported that the sectarian proselytizing tool known as NCBCPS was receiving its first legal challenge in Texas. Luckily, that case ended well for our civil liberties as the state saw its unconstitutional adoption of this tool would lead to further lawsuits and dropped it from the curriculum.

Virginians have now followed in Texans' footsteps. All it will take to remedy this one, as well, are some courageous parents who actually think the Constitution matters and are willing to act to enforce it. Craig County is smack dab in the heart of, you guessed it, Appalachia! More glorious progress for science education in the Bible Belt.

McCain's pastor problem

Finally.

I've whined and whined about the media's lack of interest in comparing McCain's ties to Parsley with Obama and Wright, the latter story receiving more coverage, literally, than Hillary Clinton herself during the same period!

Mother Jones to the rescue, bringing some balance.

PS: See this Daily Show humor on Billy Graham and other pastors in politics.

It should be aggravating

But instead it gives me a goddam*ed belly laugh!

Notice how the sheep in the video bleat at every inflection of the pastor's voice.

It should be aggravating to see government resources squandered on stupid religious superstition. Larry Langford, mayor of Birmingham, is currently undertaking a "sackcloth and ashes" campaign to counter the city's violence and crime. I'm sure it will work very well -- much better than, say, hiring police officers or spending on after-school programs for youth. I'd love to see a non-punitive lawsuit come out of this; a judge scolding the mayor and setting the record straight on our Constitution would be very welcome. Idiots wasting time and resources on magic with tax dollars pisses me off mightily. Did the 2,000 sack cloths magically appear? Do it on your day off, mayor.

The city logo of Birmingham is apparently affixed to a shiny folder holding the proclamation for the special sackcloths...

To many Christians, sackcloth and ashes symbolize humility and repentance, but the mayor’s decree came dressed with the usual accoutrements - printed on fine, invitation-stock paper and wrapped in a bright silver folder, adorned by the magic hat logo Langford commissioned for the city last year.

Here is that logo:

More magic than ever!

bwahahahahahaha

You just can't make this stuff up! (H/T: PZ & TCR)

**PS: On a related note, the National Day of Prayer is 5/1 -- it should be renamed the National Obnoxious Fundamentalist Christians use Government to Push Their Agenda Day.**

The Virginian-Pilot's Bill Sizemore on Pat Robertson

My friend and yours, American Talibanist Pat Robertson, was exposed a while back for his role in denying compensation to a sponsor of his "age-defying shake" and threatening him when he chose to use legal means to recoup $. The Virginian-Pilot exposed Robertson, and he threatened to sue them...only to come back some time later (after talking to a lawyer who told him we have this pesky thing called "freedom of the press" -- Robertson never passed the bar exam after getting his JD in 1955) and try to buy off the paper.

The author of the original expose, Bill Sizemore, now has another great article on Robertson's past and details on how he came into the ministry and got involved with TV.

From Sizemore's piece:

In the decade between the time The 700 Club became a daily program and the midseventies, CBN purchased a new facility in Portsmouth with a 175,000-watt transmitter, then a staggering 2.25-million-watt transmitter that could reach most of the mid-Atlantic coastline. Robertson also purchased five radio stations in New York State and new TV stations in Atlanta and Dallas. Then, in 1976, CBN bought a satellite and, months later, broadcast its first feed from Jerusalem. Robertson’s teleministry was now big business. In 1972, Robertson wrote that you can’t “worry about technical production when the cameraman is caught up in the Spirit and begins to weep over someone’s testimony . . . Who cares about the time if God is moving?” But only a few years later, CBN’s brand of production had become distinctly professional. No longer were broadcast slots subject to whim. No more was airtime filled with homemade puppet shows.

Along with the increasingly political slant of the show came more and more secularized programming, aimed at broadening the network’s appeal. CBN began showing family-friendly reruns like Lassie to help finance pricey advertisements for The 700 Club on other networks. Soon, secular shows took up the bulk of CBN’s airtime. This shift led to Robertson’s first run-in with the government, when the state of Massachusetts realized that the programming on WXNE-TV in Boston, purchased by CBN in 1977, was more than 50 percent secular. The station could be tax-exempt only if it functioned as a church instead of a business. Robertson subsequently shifted his holdings to a new company, Continental Broadcasting—some said this shift was to prevent the state from accessing CBN’s financial records.

This glitch did little to slow CBN’s progress, however. The station was finally beginning to turn a profit, after years of surviving on charity from Robertson’s father and local donors. The gifts had often been generous (a local car dealer, for example, once gave Robertson a free Lincoln), but Robertson’s wife still had to work in a local hospital to support their four children—two boys and two girls. By the middle seventies, though, Robertson’s risky decision to “renounce wealth and privilege” to pursue a life of Christian televangelism was suddenly paying off in a whole lot of wealth and privilege.

Robertson is one of the loudest Religious Right figures, and IMHO, there is more reason for him to be investigated more than the six that Grassley has recently focused on. Why? He's used non-profit resources to push his own for-profit ventures for years now. Even with the shake, for-profit, which he promotes on a tax-free non-profit religious channel. The lines between churches and businesses have become far too blurred, and it's about damned time to levy taxes against churches who sell lots of products and make lots of money -- they forfeit their right to claim tax exemption when they start running like a for-profit entity.

He and Dobson have for years opposed the McCain-Feingold Finance Reforms that put a dent in their ability to buy influence in DC. Not that Robertson doesn't still have enormous clout there, especially with Bush in the WH and a huge percentage of Regent grads in Washington (but not Adam Key). I think much of the public is misinformed: the overwhelming majority of people do want church-state separation, not the other way around. Here are some of Robertson's greatest hits:

“I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he [Hugo Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.” [Link]

Robertson suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent stroke was the result of Sharon’s policy, which he claimed is “dividing God’s land.” [Link]

“You know some of them [college professors] are killers!” [Link]

“I believe it’s [Islam] motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with. … [T]he goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination.” [Link]

[The following are from the American Taliban]:

"The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers?"

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different...More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals – the two things seem to go together."

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."

"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period."

"[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers."

"[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism – everything that the Bible condemns."

Gotta love him.