Northern Exposure

Like most readers, I carry an image of Alaska that was formed in large part by the quirky television program Northern Exposure. A populace comprised of congenial misanthropes and eccentrics who were charming against a backdrop of majestic natural beauty.

The frozen north it seems is not quite as friendly – at least to nonbelievers – as we were led to believe. The following letter has a decidedly less tolerant tone than one would expect to find in the Kenai Peninsula Clarion where stories of moose charges and Grizzly bear sightings make the front page. A certain Alice Shannon, whose letter appeared in the Clarion holds somewhat xenophobic notions in regard to infidels:

“It’s time to stomp out atheists in America. The majority of Americans would love to see atheists kicked out of America. If you don’t believe in God, then get out this country.

The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc. which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.

I don’t recall freedom of religion meaning no religion. Our currency even says, “In God we trust”. So to all the atheist in America: Get out of our country.

Atheists have caused the ruin of this great nation by taking prayer out of our schools and being able to practice what can only be called evil. I don’t care if they have never committed a crime, atheist are the reason crime is rampant.”

Well, Alice certainly has a bee in her bonnet. One hardly knows where to begin with this (but I am sure some readers do!). If I might throw in my two cents worth, I’d like to address Alice’s failing memory, “I don’t recall freedom of religion meaning no religion.” To quote Thomas Jefferson, author of the amendment she so clearly admires;

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

So to all you evil-doing atheists (with or without felony records) out there, watch out! Alice Shannon is on to you, and she has the [final?] solution.

My thanks to the Raving Atheist for this gem

Nearly 1 in 3 Believe Bible is Literal Word of God

I found this disturbing little bit of news in the latest issue of Editor and Publisher. I think it speaks for itself:

Nearly 1 in 3 Believe Bible is Literal Word of God

By E&P Staff

Published: May 25, 2007 10:05 AM ET
NEW YORK About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word, a new Gallup poll reveals. This percentage is only slightly lower than several decades ago.

Gallup reports that the majority of those "who don't believe that the Bible is literally true believe that it is the inspired word of God but that not everything it in should be taken literally." Finally, about one in five Americans believe the Bible is merely an ancient book of "fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man."

There is also a strong relationship between education and belief in a literal Bible, Gallup explains, with such belief becoming much less prevalent as schooling continues.

Those who believe in the literal Bible amount to 31% of adult Americans. This is a decline of about 7% compared with Gallup polls taken in the 1970s and 1980s. It is strongest in the South.

Believe in the literal word of the Bible is strongest among those whose schooling stopped with high school and declines steadily with educational level, with only 20% of college graduates holding that view and 11% of those with an advanced degree.

E&P Staff

Cincinnati's Shame

This past Sunday the Cincinnati Enquirer devoted the front page and an entire section to the creation museum opening here on the 28th. Of course, the praise was lavish and what few criticisms there were, buried in the "letters" section (yours truly was included). An entire spread was dedicated to Ken Ham, the Chaucerian mountebank who swindled the credulous out of $27 million to erect this shrine to ignorance where Adam and Eve go to Sunday school riding dinosaurs; a place where Darwin, secular science and troubling evidence hold no sway.

If our bumpkinhood was not already confirmed, this insult to every natural history museum in the world was splashed across the pages of the New York Times yesterday. And to my horror, it remains the most popular e-mailed, blogged and searched article today. Now the whole world knows of our shame and can only conclude we are hotbed of inbred goobers.

This utter barking lunacy make one almost wish for biblical wrath; a nice plague of locusts or a Sodom and Gomorrah tactical nuclear strike, anything to end the embarrassment.

Christopher Hitchens on "Militant Atheism

This appears in the current issue of Free Inquiry magazine:

"All you need is to ignore the difference between someone who believes in, say, heaven and hell and someone who doesn't. The first has a lot of work to do by way of providing anything that even looks like evidence. The second rests his case on the extreme improbability of any such evidence being adduced. Are these positions really describable as morally or intellectually equivalent? Or take the case of someone who believes in punishment for blasphemy or in prior restraint on those who might commit it. Is this the same dogma as the argument that says that religion, since it makes such huge claims, must expect to have them submitted to rigorous questioning?...The faithful believe that certain truths have been 'revealed.' The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic."

Well said...

Quote of the day

“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect of Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Creation Myths at the Tulsa Zoo

“For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it. They were beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it: ‘Proles and animals are free.’’’

1984
-George Orwell

Well, those crazy, cretinous creationists are at it again. Not satisfied with undermining scientific education in the schools, they have moved on to bigger and more public targets such as the local zoo.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Park and Recreation Board voted this past Tuesday in favor of a Biblical display highlighting the myth of Genesis in which God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh at the Tulsa Zoo.

In spite of objections from zoo officials and scientists, the board voted 3 to 1 to include the religious display without regard to the fact that theology should not be part of a taxpayer-funded scientific institution.



Jesus loves me this I know...

The lone dissenting board member, Dale McNamara, said the zoo is dedicated to animals and science, not religious beliefs. "I do not like the idea of scripture at the zoo," she said.

Exhibit curator at the zoo, Kathleen Buck-Miser, expressed misgivings about the zoo delving into theological debate. "I'm afraid we are going in the wrong direction," she said.

The move to have a creationist display was spearheaded by religious fanatic Dan Hicks, who has campaigned since the mid-nineties to have evolution-based displays removed. Hicks’ objection is to the statue of Ganesh, a Hindu elephant deity that stands outside the elephant exhibit. "I see this as a big victory," said Hicks, "It's a matter of fairness. To not include the creationist view would be discrimination."



Because the Bible tells me so!

Zoo officials argued that the zoo, as a scientific institution, does not advocate religion and that displays like the elephant statue are meant to show the animal's image among cultures. The same exhibit includes the Republican Party's elephant symbol.

Tulsa’s conservative Republican mayor, Bill LaFortune supported the initiative saying the zoo already had religious exhibits referring to the Ganesh statue. But, more likely, the two thousand signatures Hicks had collected on a petition more heavily influenced the decision on the mayor’s part. After all, Mr. LaFortune is the man who declared March as National Caffeine Awareness Month in Tulsa.

The board agreed to post a disclaimer on signs around the zoo that reads, "There are many views on the origins of biological species and their behaviors. The information that accompanies our displays is based on evidence of the natural sciences. Because scientific knowledge is subject to change these displays may be revised as new information becomes available."

Another dark day indeed for science and progress.

Fairy Tales Pass as News at the Enquirer

Fairy tales, superstition and imaginary friends now qualify as facts at the Cincinnati Enquirer. In a marketing coup that would garner the envy of Fortune 500 corporations, “Answers in Genesis” (AIG) bamboozled the Gannett owned rag into spreading their message of extreme right-wing creationist nonsense all over the front page. I wonder who at the Enquirer is on the AIG payroll?

The piece entitled “Ministry uses dinosaurs to dispute evolution” has an uppercase banner above Ken Ham the founder of the museum with some of his dinosaurs, proclaiming, “How and when did life begin? Ken Ham wants you to find the answer in his $25 million Boone County CREATION MUSEUM.


A giant step backward 

Among the more idiotic beliefs that these bible-thumping morons want you to believe is that man and dinosaurs lived together and the world is only 6,000 years old.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, of Moral Majority fame, is featured prominently in the lead with quotes such as, “When that museum is finished, it’s going to be Cincinnati’s No. 1 tourist attraction. It’s going to be a mini-Disney World.”

Oh Joy! Cincinnati is soon to be overrun with throngs of ignorant, knuckle dragging hayseeds from Kansas and Alabama. Perhaps I can make my fortune selling pieces of the “true” cross at a roadside stand to the fat pig-eyed pilgrims and their slack-jawed spawn on their quest to seek darkness and eternal imbecility. I’ve a half cord of firewood left over from this past winter; if these troglodytes believe this nonsense, they believe anything.

Falwell goes on to say, “(Ham) is a very popular speaker here at Liberty University (a rival, no doubt to Oxford and Cambridge). He brings science down to a populist level where people leave saying, ‘That makes sense.’”

“And who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?” Ham doesn’t bring science down to a “populist level”, he buries is in the medieval muck of ignorance and superstition. His “science” is fabricated out of whole cloth. One of the life size models at the new museum will be a Triceratops sporting a saddle. They also contend that the Grand Canyon was formed by floodwaters in a matter of days. This is what passes for science at the Creation Museum. It would be as funny as anything Monte Python could concoct, only they believe it to be true.

More disturbing is the fact that the 95, 000 square foot complex on 50 acres in rural Boone County receives between $300,000 and $400,000 in contributions and operates on a $14 million budget.