Month: April 2010

Intelligent Design Is Rotten Theology, Too

by tristero

I’ve been saying this for years: Intelligent Design Creationism is rotten theology which diminishes, even trivializes, the notion of God. While I’m glad to see that others have also started to figure this out. I also agree with many of Jason Rosenhouse’s criticisms of Hess’s article. Rather than rehash his criticisms, I want to focus on something Dr. Rosenhouse says towards the end of his post. I think it has crucial implications for the cultural war with the rightwing over evolution, even if it’s something no one involved in them wants to hear:

There is so much more to Christian faith than just a belief in God. The Bible itself tells us that in contemplating nature people are “without excuse” for rejecting the existence of God. From the perspective of the Biblical writers, that God existed was regarded as something so obvious as to hardly be the sort of thing that needed proof. The emphasis on faith was directed towards believing that Jesus had accepted the punishment for our sins. Thinking that complex adaptations point toward God hardly leaves you with no need for faith in accepting Christianity.

Exactly: for religious people, the existence of God is so trivially obvious it doesn’t require proof. It follows from that that a mere scientific theory can’t possibly challenge the reality of God’s existence. God’s existence is beyond faith – and beyond something as humanly specific as “belief” – it is axiomatic. The notion of what’s meant by “faith” focuses more on the belief in the crucial importance of Jesus’s mission and his dual status, both human and divine.

What all this means in terms of the evolution wars is that the issue of the existence or non-existence of God is almost completely meaningless. Sure, say, and feel, “God exists.” You can even argue proofs if you want. Whatever. It doesn’t have much bearing on understanding (ie, accepting) the details of evolutionary theories. That’s because the existence of God couldn’t possibly be a subject for anything other than the most academic kinds of speculations, like proving that 1+1 always equals 2. Evolutionary theory in no way comes close to challenging that fundamental notion (although evolution does challenge other ones less fundamental, like specific origin stories).

Or sure, say, and feel, “God doesn’t exist.” You can even argue proofs if you want. Whatever. But likewise, there are no practical implications for understanding evolution.

Here are two real world examples of the meaninglessness of the question of God’s existence for the evolution debate. Exhibit A: Kenneth Miller. Exhibit B: PZ Myers. Both are first-rate scientists and thinkers whose expertise in evolutionary theory is beyond dispute. For one, Miller, God exists. For the other, Myers, God doesn’t. Anyone who agrees with PZ and thinks Miller is an intellectual lightweight by being both Catholic and an evolutiionary biologist needs only to read his testimony in the Kitzmiller trial; Miller knows exactly what he’s talking about, and is far more knowledgeable and nuanced about it than just about anyone around. LIkewise, anyone who agrees with Miller and thinks PZ is cold-hearted and soulless needs only to read the truly astonishing posts on biological science and evolution available on Pharyngula to understand that this is someone who confronts the natural world with a highly developed sense of amazement, awe, and wonder. (And on a personal level, if you’re lucky enough to spend some time with PZ Myers (and you’re not a creationist), you’ll soon realize that he is a very kind soul. Or, as he may prefer, very kind person. Whatever.)

As I see it, the cultural war over evolution concerns primarily one issue: the interpretation of texts, specifically religious texts.* Rightwing christianists** insist that their interpretation, an interpretation that thoroughly contradicts scientific reality, is somehow a “literal” reading of the Bible. That is complete nonsense. There is no such thing as a literal reading of a book (actually, many books and miscellaneous other texts) as complex and self-contradictory as the Bible. The Bible clearly defies simplistic interpretations like those of the creationists. It is amazing, and amazingly stupid, that anyone ever lets them get away with asserting that they are telling the “truth” about the Bible. After all, let’s not forget that “What is truth?” is a question that is, quite literally (heh!), left unanswered in the Bible.

The beginning of the end of this idiotic cultural war starts by refusing to permit the rightwing to claim they somehow are reading the Bible literally, that they have anything close to a lock on its meaning. No one, or if you prefer, no one human does. Arguments about how evolution disproves the existence of God, or doesn’t, are only important to the extent they distract us from focusing on this. It is a monumentally meaningless discussion.

Nothing you can say to a religious person will convince them that God doesn’t exist. And vice versa, for those who can’t understand how anyone can “believe” in the existence of God. The few people who change their mind simply prove the general point (and, btw, those who change their mind about God’s existence based on evolution are a tiny subset of that already small group). The real issue lies elsewhere, in the interpretation of religious texts. In addition to making what evolution is about as clear as possible, we simply must effectively and relentlessly refuse to permit the rightwing to get away with the claim that they, and only they, have an accurate, literal, and true reading of the Biblical texts.

h/t Why Evolution Is True.

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*Sure, creationists misunderstand Darwin, and it’s always crucially important to correct them. But that’s not what’s front and center, imo. They wouldn’t even care about Darwin if it weren’t for their screwball interpretations of the Bible and the fact they get away with calling them “literal.”.

**Rosenhouse is correct that creationism is also rampant in much cruddy theology from other religiously-based cultural/political movements, including Islamism and certain kinds of Orthodox Judaism (there are even atheists who think ID creationism is hot stuff), but in the US, it’s the christianists that are the most salient.

Now You’re Talking

by digby

Grover Norquist has been strong arming Republicans into signing his no tax pledge for a long long time now. And the Democrats have never bothered to go after it head on. Looks like that’s about to change, and none too soon:

With grand bargains out of the question in this political environment, in practice the pledge means that Republicans oppose ending tax expenditures for special interests, since attempts to nibble around the tax code don’t always come with offsets — or they’re designed to reduce the deficit. So last year, when Obama proposed ending tax credits for companies that outsource their work overseas, which would have saved well over $100 billion, Norquist and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, opposed the move.

“[Our statement] did not defend the tax deduction,” Norquist told reporters on a conference call last night. “If you want to get rid of it, just make it revenue neutral by not making it a tax increase.”

Congressional Democrats, sensing opportunity, have now made the pledge a campaign issue. Last year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran ads on the issue in a special election for New York’s 23d District, where Democrat Bill Owens would defeat Doug Hoffman, whose Tea Party-fueled campaign overtook that of the original GOP nominee, Dede Scozzafrava.

Now they’re using the attack in a Hawaii special election to replace former Democratic Representative Neil Abercrombie, who is in the hunt for the governor’s mansion. The DCCC has launched ads against Republican Charles Djou that say he “signed a pledge that protects tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.” That’s a serious charge with unemployment sitting at nearly 10 percent.

Norquist and his allies responded last night with a conference call and statement attacking the DCCC, and Djou has complained about “mainland interference” in his race, but neither Norquist nor Djou has announced their opposition to the tax break or, in the spirit of the pledge, described offsets that would allow Djou to support overturning the credit. In the past, Norquist has attacked pledge signees who voted to end tax expenditures. For Norquist and his organization, “reform” just means tax cuts.

That’s right. And it’s about time somebody went after these people on specifics. It not only puts the individual politician on the spot, it opens up a dialog about the role of government, a topic Democrats have been running away from since the 70s. It’s time to engage this fight head on.

The word is that Republicans are actually a little bit worried about this. It certainly can muddy their message.

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Sociopathic Plutocrat

by digby

Huff Po:

“If anything happens to me, I’ll be looking down from heaven at you all. I love you. Take care of my baby. Tell her that daddy loves her, she’s beautiful, she’s funny. Just take care of my baby girl.” Those were the chilling words in a note from Josh Napper, a West Virginia coal miner who was killed in the Massey mine explosion on Monday. The note was written to Napper’s girlfriend, Jennifer, over Easter weekend — just days before his fears were realized. It was described to CNN’s John Roberts by Pam Napper, Josh’s mother. Pam also lost her brother and nephew in the blast. Josh’s daughter, Jenna Leigh, is 20 months old. Pam went on to describe the safety problems her son had experienced before at the same mine, as well as a powerful religious experience he had just prior to his death.

You can see the video, here.

Then go watch the sociopathic teabagger who ran the mine talk about how he breaks unions so he can undercut his competitors.

To date, Blankenship has largely succeeded in purging union members from his company’s ranks. Only 1.8 percent of Massey’s workforce is unionized. One miner who was employed by Massey for 25 years said that working for Blankenship was “like living under a hammer. It’s all about the bottom line, we all know that.” In 2007, the National Labor Relations Board determined that Massey’s refusal to hire union workers was illegal.

But if the Upper Big Branch miners were unionized, there’s a greater likelihood that the mine would have been safer. Since 2002, less than than one-fifth of the total mine worker fatalities have occurred at unionized mines. And the reason is simple: workers at a unionized mine are not afraid to report unsafe working conditions. “I can absolutely say that if these miners were members of a union, they would have been able to refuse unsafe work…and would not have been subjected to that kind of atrocious conditions,” said United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.

Blankenship calls that “union terrorism” and says it makes for a bad business climate:

Here’s that fine friend of labor at the teabagger rally he helped bankroll:

I honestly can’t think of a better illustration of plutocratic arrogance.He’s literally killing them, but because he looks like a patriotic good old boy and mutters corn pone gibberish in vaguely soothing tones, they cheer wildly and consider him one of them. He climbed back into his personal helicopter that day and had a good laugh having just been reassured once again that there’s a sucker born every minute.

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Bullshit

by tristero

The Times says this new comment from the Vatican is a “conciliatory statement” which is is ” striking for [its] different tone.”

Bullshit. They are still minimizing the extent of the problem within the Catholic Church:

The debate on sexual abuses, not only among the clergy, proceeds …

And there’s this:

“We probably must create a deeper experience of events that have so negatively marked the lives of people,”

Probably?

And get a load of this fucking sick garbage (in case it isn’t obvious, the Church’s disgusting evasions make me very angry):

While the tones were measured, Father Lombardi repeated the church’s analysis of what caused a profusion of abuse cases of past decades: the “sexual revolution” and a general secularization of society, and said pedophilia in the church should be seen in the context of a broader problem in society.

That’s right. Liberals, by insisting that it is perfectly moral for two consenting adults to love each other are, in the Vatican’s opinion, caused priests to rape children.

As for news coverage, he said journalists have been softer on the subject in countries where the church is stronger.

Translated: We have to gain better control of the press.

At the same time, more attention should be paid to the question of child abuse in the United States, where, he said, “in only 2008,” 62,000 such cases have been reported, “while the group of Catholic priests is so small as not to be even taken into consideration as such.”

As if that makes a fucking bit of difference. These are priests, for crissakes! They are authority figures for Catholics, they are supposed to be above reproach. And they have shamefully, shamefully abused that trust and created serious, lasting damage to their victims.

And then:

Supporters of the pope, he said, will continue “responding with patience to the drip-drip of partial or presumptive ‘revelations’ that seek to wear down his credibility or that of other institutions and persons of the church.”

Very slowly, because the Vatican is apparently overrun by morons and malicious misfits these days:

The only people wearing down the credibility of the Catholic Church, the pope, and the Vatican are the raping priests, their superiors who failed to punish them, and the Church hierarchy who conspired to cover it all up. If that includes the pope, and all indications are that it does, then the pope is a moral midget and a criminal. As anyone who knows Church history can tell you, he would hardly be the first.

Nor does it show the slightest disrespect to characterize Benedict that way if he participated in the coverup of rape. Again, it would be Benedict who has shown the most vulgar, blasphemous disrespect for his religion by behaving in this fashion.

Regardless of whether the pope was personally involved, the wholesale rape of women and children by Catholic priests and the coverup of their crimes has been going on for decades, if not longer. Until the Vatican stops stonewalling and blustering, it behooves the media to double down, that is, they should both report their cynical excuses and denials AND also further abuse revelations.

In that spirit, here’s one more recent example of child rape by a Catholic priest:

In May, the leader of central Norway’s small Roman Catholic population unexpectedly resigned with little explanation. The Vatican on Wednesday said why: He sexually abused a boy in the early 1990s.

It was the latest case to emerge in a clerical sexual abuse scandal that has been churning through Europe in recent months, putting the Vatican on the defensive and forcing bishops across the continent to confront the issue.

The bishop, Georg Mueller, 58, who left his diocese in June, has since undergone therapy and “no longer carries out pastoral activity,” according to a statement by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

Translated: this rapist is still a priest, and still goes by the honorific “Bishop.”.

Oh, and:

The newspaper also reported that four other child sexual abuse cases involving Norwegian priests had come to the attention of the church, dating from the 1950s and the 1980s.

Sick. Really, really sick.

Support Wikileaks

by tristero

My friend Nancy K. of Code Pink NYC sent me a link to a site where you can donate to Wikileaks. They, of course, are the good people who brought us the long-suppressed video of the dreadful attack in Iraq in which a Reuters photographer and his driver was killed, and two children were wounded. Please donate as much as you can afford: even $5 helps.

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They’re Baaaack

by digby

Last fall I wrote a post about CNN giving over a three hour block of time to Pete Peterson’s wrecking crew called Fiscal Madness. They showed a “documentary” called IOUSA, and then hosted a “discussion” about it featuring nothing but deficit hawks. I wrote:

I say this is a shock doctrine documentary because it is nearly impossible for me to believe that it is a coincidence that the deficit hawks have put together this slick “non-partisan” documentary and well financed campaign to cut spending at the moment of what many people believe is America’s greatest economic peril since the 1930s. They are, quite obviously, attempting to use the crisis to dismantle the social safety net and avoid doing the real work of reforming the financial system. Shock Doctrine 101.

And when I say slick and non-partisan, it really is. The show also featured a panel with none other than the smarmy village saint Bill Bradley and the Clinton era deficit maven Alice Rivlin. Of course, it also included hedge fund king and deficit fetishist Pete Peterson and his little dog ex-CBO GAO chief David Walker. (Walker seems to be halfway aware that he might not be on the right track, but he’s committed to this project.) It couldn’t be more in keeping with the post-partisan, non-ideological zeitgeist. Except it’s ideological to the core.

One would think this message is so dissonant that no one could possibly find it persuasive. After all, they are worrying about some potential future catastrophic event while we are in middle of a current calamity. But it’s actually very clever —you can see by the press release that it sounds like they are talking about the current problem, even though their prescription is exactly the opposite of what is required . Indeed the diabolical effect of this project and its timing is that it’s designed to make people believe that government spending is the cause of the current economic crisis.

And it’s smart. What they are prescribing makes more intuitive sense to many people than what is actually necessary to solve the problem. We are all coming to terms with the fact that we are going to have to stop spending beyond our means and pay down our debt in order to get our financial houses in order. Why shouldn’t the government have to do the same thing, especially if it’s facing an imminent “balloon payment” with all those retirees and sick people getting ready to explode the debt? We all know that the government has been spending like drunken sailors and it stands to reason that’s why we find ourselves in this crisis, right?

The sainted Bill Breadley said it right out on the program:

People understand that if they run up debts in their own lives, it’s no different than when the government runs up debts the same way.

Americans have been mentally trained over the past few decades to believe drivel like that— the free market is always the preferred method to solve economic problems, that the government should be run like a business (or your household budget) and, most importantly, that government is the cause of problems, not the solution. This deficit obsession plays into all those beliefs and makes it very difficult to explain in the middle of the crisis that the government isn’t a business or a household and needs to go further into debt in periods when everyone else is trying to escape it. And, needless to say, it also sounds like the tax ‘n spend libruls are at it again.

Well, guess what? CNN’s doing it again! And this time Campaign For America’s Future wants to stop them:

This weekend, CNN is giving four hours of free airtime to the leading propagandist fanning the flames of deficit hysteria, Pete Peterson, along with his lackeys.Click here to demand CNN stop giving free airtime to deficit crazies this weekend – And if they do go ahead with this programming, tell them to provide balance to Pete Peterson’s deficit hysteria. Give equal time to defenders of Social Security, Medicare and public investment.

CNN plans to air Peterson’s thoroughly debunked propaganda movie “I.O.U.S.A,” – and then his acolytes will have free reign to spread their usual lies about Social Security, Medicare and government in general without any fiscal expert to challenge them and give a different point of view.

How do we know? Because CNN did the exact same thing with “I.O.U.S.A” last year. No debate. Just Peterson’s propaganda. Is this how “the most trusted name in news” should cover the debates on retirement security, job creation and fighting poverty?

We have just one day to get CNN to balance it’s programming.Click here to demand CNN stop these programs – or give equal time to defenders of Social Security, Medicare and public investment.

Whose voices will be shut out this weekend? The nation’s leading economists who are urging our government to use deficits today to invest in long-term prosperity – such as Paul Krugman, James Galbraith and Dean Baker. The fiscal experts who have repeatedly said Social Security is sound and broader health care reform will protect Medicare. All of you who voted for an active government to invest in our future.

While you are kept silent, who does CNN give the microphone to? A multimillionaire Wall Street mogul who wants our government to slash investments while millions are losing their jobs. This guy had no problem taking tax cuts for the wealthy that caused our deficit problems – and his Wall St. buddies crashed the economy.

Click here to demand CNN stop these programs – or give equal time to defenders of Social Security, Medicare and public investment.

We are in the midst of a great debate over the direction America should take. “The most trusted name in news” should be the place where we have the debate, not where one opinion is deemed to be absolute truth. We already have a cable news network that does that. We don’t need another unfair, unbalanced channel.

We have just one day to act. Use our action page to sound the alarm on Facebook and Twitter. Forward this email far and wide. Don’t let Pete Peterson take over the debate about our future.

If you have time to do just one political thing today, please click over to that page and help. This may be the single most dangerous right wing threat we face. And that’s saying something.

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Stupak’s Out

by digby

Bart Stupak is retiring. Evidently, he doesn’t care for the way he’s being treated by his erstwhile allies on the right. I guess he never noticed how they treated people they disagree with before.

And while nobody should have to deal with death threats, it’s more than a little ironic that someone who adamantly opposed the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act would end up being driven from office by his allies on that issue. Perhaps he can have a better feeling of what it must be like to be a desperate teen-aged girl facing a raging mob and gory pictures, red faced zealots calling you a murderer — as you try to walk into a clinic.

It shouldn’t happen to anyone.

From what I gather around the blogosphere the party is searching madly for the right man to run in Stupak’s place and one of them might even be pro-choice, although that doesn’t appear to be any kind of consideration. If history is any guide the DCCC will try to recruit the most rightwing, forced pregnancy Blue Dog they can find because the only thing worse than losing is backing a liberal and losing. That makes you look weak.

Connie Saltonstall is already in the race. She’s not backed by anyone important, only the National Organization For Women, NARAL and Planned Parenthood and there’s no reason why the Democratic party should pay any attention to them. (It’s not like they’re the Catholic Bishops or the NRA or anything …) She is just a Michigan Democrat who was so offended by the fact that Stupak held health care reform hostage in order to stage yet another assault on women’s constitutional rights that she decided to run against him, one of the most difficult tasks any politician can undertake and one that almost always earns the enmity of the local and national party. She did it anyway, and while they were happy to have her put some pressure on Stupak at the right moment they would be even more happy for her to be a good little girl and back out now, I’m sure.

I sincerely hope she stays in. I have no way of knowing if the women’s groups will stay on board, but if the party picks another anti-choice candidate they probably will. Saltonstall has raised almost 100k on Act Blue in the past month. Blue America has been a strong backer from the day she announced. We’ll stay on board as long as she does.

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Scientist Of The Year

by tristero

Congratulations to Matthew Berger for his extraordinary discovery of a new hominid species, australopithecus sediba. Since Berger was 9 years old when he found the fossil – he’s 11 now – some will think he was just a lucky kid. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am quite serious: This represents the work of a preternaturally gifted scientist who, if he continues his career, has even greater discoveries before him.

Great job, Matthew!

Another Day, Another Catholic Priest Sex Scandal (And Coverup)

by tristero

And this one’s horrible in a completely different way than the others we’ve been hearing about recently: a Catholic priest broke into a woman’s house, and assaulted her. Then she ran out of her house in terror and is now living Ireland, where she can be sure she won’t encounter any more perverted priests.

Oh, and the priest? He’s still a priest but they’ve “begun” working on removing him from the priesthood.

Look, people. These things take time. The last thing the Church wants to be is unfair to a priest. After all, the assault happened a mere 5 1/2 years ago, and he pled guilty to the charges a scant 3 years back (you’ll be relieved to know the priest only got probation). The Church needed to be absolutely sure of all the facts before it felt comfortable to begin to move against him.

And there most certainly are extenuating factors in this case. For one thing, the priest didn’t have any long history of sexual history abuse. Complaints about him only go back around 12 years or so.

Nothing to see here. Ho hum.

Mushroom Tea

by digby

Here’s a funny video of the Teabag Express at the US Space and Rocket Center in Alabama. They’re all whining about how the government can’t do anything right — as they stand underneath a huge rocket ship.

Victoria Jackson, by the way, is the perfect spokeswoman for the movement. I think she should be the National Security Advisor in the Palin/Bachman administration. Or Trig’s babysitter. One or the other.

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