The folks behind Expelled are still in defensive mode this week, screaming all the while of course that those who claim they’ve plagiarized from both educational sources and PBS are simply trying to silence them because they’re speaking out against the dogma that is evolution. Apparently Yoko Ono and the band The Killers have also had their copyrights violated. I suppose it’s not enough to interview scientists under false pretenses to promote a nonsense non-theory in a movie peppered with images of the Third Reich; no, when you’re lying for Jesus, it’s best o go all-out.
(By the way, the link to Expelled above actually goes to the Expelled Exposed website, because links to this counter-site will help to raise its ranking in search engine results for the term Expelled.)
James Dobson’s American Family Association is trying to get Marriot hotels to drop the portion of their in-room pay-per-view movie service that includes adult fare. One would assume their thinly veiled boycott threat does not apply to depictions of the biblically mandated act of lesbian love.
The right-wing punditry over at Townhall.com are a wonderful source of stupidity to draw upon; even on otherwise quiet weeks I’m sure I’ll have no trouble finding some perverse statement over there to ponder in this series of posts.
This week’s Townhall Special Friends are Michael “War on Penguins” Medved and our old buddy, Dinesh Confuz’da.
Medved points out rightly that at no time in the foreseeable future will an atheist be elected president in this country. Well… duh. He seems to think an atheist wouldn’t be cut out for the job, though. Says the Penguiphobe:
As Constitutional scholars all point out, the Presidency uniquely combines the two functions of head of government (like the British Prime Minister) and head of state (like the Queen of England). POTUS not only appoints cabinet members and shapes foreign policy and delivers addresses to Congress, but also presides over solemn and ceremonial occasions.
…
For instance, try to imagine an atheist president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the Indians in Massachusetts?
I suppose he could thank the Indians, but I imagine some of them might be just a tad bitter about the destruction of their civilization by those loving Christian settlers. A better choice might be the farmers who grew or raised the food folks around the nation are about to devour, or to the folks throughout history who have made the agricultural advances that allow us to live in such abundance. How about thanking the framers of the constitution, who had the forethought to create a secular nation where people are free to celebrate the Thanksgiving tradition (or not to) according to their own customs? How about thanks to the men and women who have died over the years fighting to preserve the rights laid out in that document? Any of these seem more profound and meaningful to me than a simple “Praise Jesus!”
Then there’s the significant matter of the Pledge of Allegiance. Would President Atheist pronounce the controversial words “under God”? … Moreover, what patriotic songs would our non-believer chief executive authorize for major celebrations and observances? “God Bless America” is out, obviously, as is “America the Beautiful” (with its chorus, “America, America, God Shed His Grace on Thee.”) “My Country ‘tis of Thee” features an altogether unacceptable last verse (“Our father’s God to thee/Author of Liberty/To Thee we sing…”) and “The Star Spangled Banner” national anthem also concludes with a verse that could cause hives to the ACLU (“Then conquer we must when our cause it is just/And this be our motto: In God is Our Trust.”)
Does Medved really think the ability to sing patriotic songs is an important qualification for a presidential candidate? Does he think it’s impossible to appreciate the intention of a song without picking it apart line by line? (I mean, really, what would have become of Everybody Wang Chung Tonight if people had delved too far into the meaning of the lyrics?) Does he cling to the mistaken idea that the “under God” in the pledge of allegiance was anything but an overreaction to the Red Scare?
The notion of dropping or altering all references to God and faith on public occasions to avoid discomfort for a single individual amounts to a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency.
A better formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency would be one where the nation is successfully attacked by terrorists, plunged into an unjustified, poorly executed war, spied on by its government, implicated in torture, its currency devalued, its economy in freefall. Good thing people like Medved are around to convince voters to opt for at least another four years of the McSame.
There’s a difference between an atheist, however, and a Mormon or a Jew – despite the fact that the same U.S. population (about five million) claims membership in each of the three groups. For Mitt and Joe, their religious affiliation reflected their heritage and demonstrated their preference for a faith tradition differing from larger Christian denominations. But embrace of Jewish or Mormon practices doesn’t show contempt for the Protestant or Catholic faith of the majority, but affirmation of atheism does.
Unfortunately most of America subscribes to this theory – believing in any fairy tale is better than believing in none.
Atheism itself shows contempt for no one; contempt for unreasoning beliefs, perhaps, but not necessarily for the people who embrace them. I certainly can’t speak for all atheists, but personally I strongly support your right to believe what you want – but I won’t join you in the beliefs themselves, nor in your presumed right to push them or their consequences onto everyone else.
Winning the War on Islamo-Nazism.
What the hell is Islamo-Nazism? Has our national dialogue been so dumbed down that we can justify anything by claiming that damned Osama bin Hitler will win if we don’t all line up to support the republican party line?
Our enemies insist that God plays the central role in the current war and that they affirm and defend him, while we reject and ignore him. The proper response to such assertions involves the citation of our religious traditions and commitments, and the credible argument that embrace of modernity, tolerance and democracy need not lead to godless materialism.
Yes, because those Islamo-Nazis will rush to embrace us if we all take up Christianity or Judaism.
The charge that our battle amounts to a “war against Islam” seems more persuasive when an openly identified non-believer leads our side—after all, President Atheist says he believes in nothing, so it’s easy to assume that he leads a war against belief itself. A conventional adherent of Judeo-Christian faith can, on the other hand, make the case that our fight constitutes of an effort to defend our own way of life, not a war to suppress some alternative – and that way of life includes a specific sort of free-wheeling, open-minded religiosity that has blessed this nation and could also bless the nations of the Middle East.
There again is the assumption that a lack of belief in the supernatural amounts to a desire for the systematic suppression of religion. While there are probably more than a few atheists who wouldn’t be bothered by such actions (just as there are some religious folks who have openly called for atheists to have stamps on their foreheads to identify them as less than human), the vast majority of US atheists I’ve encountered simply want to be able to live here without feeling the need to hide that fact that they don’t subscribe to any particular mythology.
And now we come to the latest screed by Dinesh, He-Whose-Name-Is-So-Easy-To-D’stort-That-I-Can’t-Help-Myself. He begins by whining that evolution is “taught in an atheistic way” in public schools, citing several books and essays containing passages pointing out the fact that the evidence for evolution damages the credibility of religious theories of our origin. One of the books he mentions is, he says, is “widely assigned”, but no data is provided on what level of circulation any of these books have. (To be fair, I’ve not read Mr. D’souza’s latest book, from which he draws these examples, and it’s entirely possible he provides more detailed information there.) I do know that during all my years at public schools in the 70s and 80s, never once was I assigned a textbook that took a specific stance one way or the other on the existence of God. Never once in college (where I spent 11 years, mostly part-time while working to pay for it) was I exposed to any mention, positive or negative, except in philosophy and literature courses where the topic was relevant and where it was addresses in an even-handed way.
But let’s just accept for purposes of this discussion the idea that those biology textbooks are just brimming with great oozing masses of atheistic immorality (and ignore the possibility that they may often simply be perceived that way because evolution itself represents such a strong argument against God).
Law suits, Dinesh says, are just the thing to solve this problem of rampant government-approved non-belief. I disagree: I think the textbook makers should voluntarily pull such authors’ opinions from the books – keeping millions of their and the school districts’ dollars from being handed over to lawyers. Why? Because the act of learning about evolution and the development of the reasoning skills used to understand the theory are far superior tools for breaking free from religion’s grasp than any personal opinion from any scientist could ever hope to be.
Schools would be on notice that they cannot use scientific facts to draw metaphysical conclusions in favor of atheism.
Atheism denies the metaphysical. Scientific facts are used to draw scientific conclusions about atheism. Deal with it.
In this way Darwinism in the public schools would no longer be a threat to religion in general or Christianity in particular.
If by “Darwinism” you mean the theory of evolution and the scientific method attendant to it, then these will always be a threat to religion, because they will always represent a better way to understand the world than “invisible sky-daddy told me so!”