FFRF writes to Ball State about creationist "astronomy" course

Jerry Coyne posted the letter and some commentary on his Why Evolution is True blog:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/the-freedom-from-religion-foundation-to-ball-state-university-cease-and-desist-your-religious-indoctrination/

I doubt a lawsuit will have legs, but I'm glad to see them taking action on a phony professor who does a bait-and-switch number on students who register for a science course and get a religion course.

Thank you, FFRF and Jerry Coyne!

Another High School Hero!

Why I Sued Northwest Rankin High School is a letter from a courageous 16-year-old who sued her high school for forcing her to attend a Jesus-drenched assembly.  In the lawsuit she is referred to only by initials, but today she came out with the post at the American Humanist Association site.

Key quotation: 

"I am not an angry atheist. As a matter of fact, I am not an atheist at all. I hold many Christian beliefs and values, and I do not mean to attack the religion or its message. Instead, this is a case about our constitutional right to be free from the government promoting these religious beliefs."

Damn straight!  You can't have a "Christian" school without defining what is Christian and what is not.  This means Catholics who don't believe the tenets of a Baptist minister could be forced to be preached at by one anyway.  It means Seventh-Day Adventists could be told they're not true Christians if they don't go to church on Sunday.  It means that children who find themselves mumbling the "wrong" words at the end of the Lord's Prayer could feel disenfranchised or offended.

Settlers from England certainly knew the sad English history of "official" religions switching back and forth and the murders committed because of it.  No "Christian" is free if any Christian can declare they know which Christianity is the best one.  They knew that "Bloody Mary" murdered Protestants.  They would have known about the Inquisition, too.  And then some of them were deists....  There's no doubt whatever that the Founders wanted the church to stay out of government and vice versa.

So anyway, good for her for standing up for the Constitution and her (and her parent's) right to decide whether and how to worship without bullies in her school forcing it on her.


hat tip: Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True blog

Food Nazis: A Rant

This isn't an atheist topic at all, but as a skeptic & pet-owner, I have to vent about a category of credulous fools that drive me crazy on the interwebs and in person.  They are what I call food nazis.  They are one subtype of the "Issues" flame warrior.

They are against all things "unnatural" or not "organic."  They lobby against genetically modified foods... that is, those that are modified through laboratory manipulation of DNA, versus the "organic" food they eat that represents hundreds of years of genetic tinkering through breeding and cultivation.  They want only pure foods in their bodies, which is fine.  They usually have mysterious maladies that apprently come from eating the same foods the rest of us ate growing up.  They don't want to eat anything they can't pronounce, though they are able to learn to pronounce "edamame" and "acai." They think they will live forever due to their superior nutrition despite scant evidence that food additives other than nitrates will or can cause cancer.  I've actually been told by a woman with fibromyalgia that she will long outlive me.  AHA!  Take THAT!!!  My question: she's in such pain from worrying about whether she's in pain, why would she want to live that long?  (Or will it just seem like she's living longer because she's in pain and she never has any fun?)

The food nazi will lecture you about what you should be eating based on their flimsy diagnosis of you.  A food nazi I had the displeasure of working with several years ago lectured me about eating eggs for breakfast.  She knew the nutritional content of everything I ate and insidiously asked me "ohhh that smells good what is it?"  And then when I tell her... WHAM!  "That's got cholesterol and calories and fat and..."

To which I answered "What the hell do you know?  My cholesterol is 93 so shut up about what I eat and mind your own business!  You're not my doctor!"  (Yes, I said it, and loudly, too)

There is another kind that I really can't abide.  Pet food Nazis.  These people are convinced that feeding raw food to their pet is superior to any feeding method any pet owner could choose, anywhere.  They are, in a word, zealots.

The diet is aptly called "BARF" for "Bones and Raw Food" or "Biologically Appropriate Raw Food."  The followers of this movement insist that their feeding method is better because it's more natural.  Pointing out to them they they are falling for the naturalistic fallacy (or appeal to nature) falls on deaf ears.  Informing them that cats and dogs have been eating the cooked leftovers of their owners for thousands of years falls on deaf ears.  Reminding them that evolution requires only that individuals of the species "survived" just long enough to reproduce and in sufficient numbers is the reason for wolf evolution, not anything in their diet, falls on deaf ears. 

They do respond to a call for proof.  Pointing out that there have been no scientific studies proving their point raises the spectre of Big Food Companies "owning" the vets who do the studies and sell the kibble (despite the fact that most kibble is purchased in stores).  I challenged the manufacturer of one of these raw food diets to conduct a study and they insisted it would cost too much money.  Really?  They have oodles of rabid followers who would gladly pay for bloodwork & stool samples to give them more ammo when they try to shame fellow pet owners into jumping onto their bandwagon.  And how hard would it be to pay a veterinary school to survey pet owners bringing in pets with cancer to see what the pets are eating?  Wouldn't most vet schools jump at the chance to grab some easy grant money? I thought they were easily bought and paid for.

They are as bad as scientologists and their demonization of psychiatric meds. 

The thing is, just as with human diets, there is some truth to the claim that diet and health are connected.  Human food nazis such as the twit I used to share an office with are only too happy to tell you what is in your food and what it can do to or for you.  They read "Prevention" magazine and shop at Whole Foods and listen to NPR, which never has ads for McDonalds or Skittles.  They are superior to the rest of us and they will live to be 100 years old and delight in the fantasy of going tsk tsk to us at our funerals.   We normal people will die young from horrible diseases and on our deathbeds we'll say "You were right.  I should have eaten edamame!"  This fantasy keeps them going as they nibble on their tasteless grub.

There is also a raw food fantasy about human foods, that ignores the fact that we've been cooking for eons.  It's the "cave man" or paleolithic diet.  There is zero evidence that this is good for modern humans.  I was in Paris for a few weeks and almost every cafe serves raw hamburger.  Blech.  The French may have the enzymes or antibodies or whatever for digesting that stuff, but I wasn't going to risk it.  Fortunately, they also have McDonalds in Paris.  (Yes, I did it!  I went to McDonalds in Paris!  Subway, too!)
 

Yes, that's a raw egg!

Animals, such as ourselves, certainly can live to old age, and diet can play a part, but evolution didn't dictate that.  Evolution doesn't really care if we live to old age, except perhaps that men can continue to inseminate women well past the age when women undergo "the change."  But it's not necessary for survival.  Humans only need to live to about 12 to 20 to pass along their DNA, unless grandparenting turns out to be essential to training the young-uns, in which case 40 will do.  In cats, dogs, and other canids, the individual only needs to live to be about 7-8 months old.  Any old diet can keep all of these species "alive" in an evolutionary sense.

The other thing they don't get is that cats and dogs are different species.  YES!  They are!  Cats are much closer to their wild ancestors than dogs are.  They can't survive on table scraps as dogs can.  Dog fanatics will cite books or articles written about cat nutrition and draw a false equivalence. These nutters will also draw an equivalence to people that's totally wrong.  For example, xylitol will cause hypoglycemia in a dog but not at all in a human.  Diabetic humans can eat xylitol and it doesn't affect their glucose level, but a dog could die from hypoglycemic shock from chewing on a stick of sugar-free gum.

So... they may be right.  They may be wrong.  There may be no difference at all between cooked and raw diets, assuming the kinds of foods eaten are the same.  Their own personal experiences are all they need.  Have there been any people or pets killed by salmonella?  Would any of the food nazis who forced their food fetishes on those victims be posting online?  NO!  Would people who died from food-borne pathogens be flame warriors on interwebs forums?  NO!  Dead people can't type!  Would food nazis who got cancer admit that their food fetishes did them no good?  NO!  So we have a biased sampling of opinions based on naturalistic fantasies, erm fallacies.

Eating vegetables & fruits, keeping weight under control, not smoking, not drinking (or not drinking much) are commonsense "rules" for people to follow.  I avoid nitrites because they've been shown to contribute to leukemia.  I avoid fish because I don't believe in strip-mining the ocean for a sandwich, and anyway they swim in their own pee and who knows what pollutants are in them?  (hey, I try to be rational but fish are just plain icky)  My bird gets all-natural food because the company that makes it is careful to balance nutrients he'd get in nature.  (He's a zebra finch - about the size of a mouse).  I wouldn't claim superiority without proof, though.  I just go with my gut and my own best thinking.  If scientific research proved me wrong I'd go with other recommendations in a heartbeat.
Then there's Hitch's example. Despite being genetically disposed to pancreatic cancer, he did everything "wrong" and yet didn't seem to be whining about his decisions after he got sick.  The food nazi I had to endure at work tried to convince me I'd live to be 100 if I ate like her.  I told her I probably wouldn't, but it would feel like 100 years.

Is it wrong to call them "Food nazis?"  Well consider that the Nazis were also health fetishists.   They were anti-tobacco before anyone in the U.S. was.  They made a few good points.  "Racial hygiene" was a repulsive outgrowth of this focus on health and purity.

Not that food fetishists in the U.S. are going down that path, but ya know... they should just shut up about their

So to all the food nazis out there, when you wag your finger at me, I just might show one of mine to you.

May 11 Links

Herb Silverman on how or whether government should define religion

Jerry Coyne summarizes the Pew Report on the Muslim World.  The news isn't good.

Some Jewish women want to wail at the wailing wall.  Lots of Jewish men don't want them to do it.  The military has to intervene to let them.  Crazy.

The Black Ladies of Los Angeles buy their Sunday best from a Jewish Iranian clothier... and never on a Saturday.  I have to admit, I have always admired black lady church clothes.  Nobody does it better, and apparently the black ladies of Los Angeles are the best of the best.

I can see my house from here!  Live stream from the space station.

Unintentionally funny church signs  (found via reddit atheism - yes, I went there!)

The Dark Side of Home Schooling (found via the Richard Dawkins Foundation:  The Dark Side of Home Schooling)

last-minute addition:  Boston pediatric psychiatrist barred because of diagnosing "sprititual" disease.  They won't report which church Dr. Kam took his patient to.  Why?  Shouldn't people be warned away from this dangerous church, too?  (h/t Religion Clause)

Video of the Week: "The Storytelling of Science" hosted by Lawrence Krauss with a stellar panel of sciency atheistic types.  Be sure to make time for the second part. Neil DeGrasse Tyson goes ballistic!



Part Two:

God Works in Mysterious Ways? Seriously?

Like everyone else I think the rescue of the three women in Cleveland is a great story.  Waiting for years for her moment, perhaps earning the trust of her captor in order to create such a moment, Amanda Berry screams to a passerby, who comes to her aid and calls 911 on her behalf.  The police respond, rescue the other two women and the child born into that horrible situation, and now the captors are behind bars and the women are with their families.

The aunt of one said: “I will tell you this because I was there to see her- all three girls. God works in mysterious ways. It’s just unbelievable, unbelievable, these girls, these women are so strong; stronger than I am."  Did she work in her praise for god just out of a sense of duty?  I wouldn't give that callous asshole one iota of thanks for letting the perp have "free will" to deprive three others (and then his rape-daughter also) of theirs.  What kind of "good" god is this?


First of all, God could have given this man ALS or crippled him in a car wreck, preventing him from being able to snatch three girls off the street and systematically rape them.  Or he could have blessed him with visions of His goodness and inspired him to join the priesthood (where he would rape little boys instead).  Or He could have just caused the guy's mother to have a miscarriage and prevented the whole thing.  How many mysterious ways could God have worked on this problem?  A bajillion, at least!

Did "He" choose to do any of those things?  The wise and loving father who looks after the innocent?  NO!  He looked over the guy's shoulder while he was raping those girls!  Or he closed his eyes, or maybe he put all his energy into rigging baseball games in favor of the team with the most prayerful people on their side.  He certainly didn't lift a finger to help these girls.  He could at least have prevented an innocent baby being born into the situation.

This is the classic Problem of Evil.  If god is all-powerful and omniscient and omnibenevolent, then why didn't he intervene?  Either 1)  he's not all-powerful or 2) he's not omniscient or 3) he's not benevolent.  Option four:  he could intervene but chooses not to is hardly a characteristic of a god worth worshiping but people will defend him with that line.  As Tracie Harris said on The Atheist Experience, "If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God."

Coincidentally, the niece's name is Gina DeJesus.  Hallelujah.  I can't imagine keeping that name after what she's been through.

Deconversion Stories of Famous Atheists

Dan Barker, former evangelical preacher and now co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  His autobiography is Losing Faith in Faith and he also wrote Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America' Leading Atheists.





Bart Ehrman, Biblical scholar who trained to be a pastor and became an atheist.  He peeked behind the curtain and found out that the Wizard was a fraud.  Most of the video summarizes the main problems in the transmission of the books of the Bible and early debates about Jesus:



Seth Andrews, former Christian broadcaster and now podcaster and speaker, wrote Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason.

Jerry DeWitt, another ex-pastor (Pentecostal), wrote Hope After Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism. He is the first graduate of The Clergy Project, started by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins to give closet atheist pastors a safe place to discuss transitioning to secular life.



Teresa Macbain, also a member of The Clergy Project. She came out despite certain unemployment, and she is now a speaker and Public Relations Director for American Atheists. (Mute until she is at the podium b/c there's terrible feedback):



Matt Dilahunty of The Atheist Experience:



Michael Shermer (blog post): he read up on evolution in order to debunk it, and became a skeptic and atheist


I don't know if this guy is famous but he ought to be!  He tried to convert "natives" and they deconverted him:



And the classic, "Why I am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell (not read by him):



His answers to lame questions in an interview. His deconversion is part of the interview:

May 4 Link Round-up

Moon Landing Faked!  Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories  Skeptical article in Scientific American ... not by Michael Shermer

 Real paleontologists visited the Creation Museum.  Fortunately they were not left speechless.

The survey says:  Christians are more like Pharisees than like Christ

PZ Myers destroys the aquatic ape hypothesis idiocy.

10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About Themselves

Interview (.pdf) with the author of Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet and How We Live

Florida freethinkers win the right to distribute atheist literature in a Florida school system.  The schools had allowed a group to leave Bibles on a table for students, so freethought literature will now be available as well.

A printable electronic ear has been developed so borg people can now be their own ipod.  Add Google Glass to become a total Borg, but it may not last:  Google Glass:  Too Dorky to Live?

Rep. Randy Forbes tells Congress that the Obama administration is waging war on Christians in the military.  Politifact says Mostly False:  "This did happen in at least one briefing at a reserve center in Pennsylvania. The Army says it was a mistake -- made by an individual, not the command -- that was corrected upon the first complaint."

Westboro Baptist "Church" threatens to picket George Jones' funeral.  They're trying so hard to make conservatives hate them.  Why isn't it working?

More affinity fraud, this time pastors in Toronto, who bilked their congregation of $9 million Canadian (it's still a lot of money even if it is Canadian)

It's Buddhists vs Muslims in Sri Lanka and Burma, with Buddhists adopting violence contrary to their religion.

Richard Carrier reviews a book with mythicist arguments against the historical Jesus so you don't have to.  Really.  Doesn't sound like a very good book.  Carrier's review is good reading, though.

Video of the Week: The Four Horsemen in Conversation (Dawkins, Dennett, Carrier and the late great Hitchens)