I disagree. I don’t see how this is an ad hominem attack. There’s always going to be a couple of nutjobs who are completely out of place in any population. In this case, it’s Berlinski and Fuller. The existence of one or two out of millions does not invalidate my argument.

Here’s a question for the Discovery Institute, Access Research Network, or any of those other “academic freedom fighters” out there: If “intelligent design” isn’t religious and isn’t creationism, then why is a religious guy (DJK) using it to “prove” creation?

I am totally down with this post except for this excerpt because it’s an ad hominem attack. It assumes that the only people making these arguments are religious. Sadly, David Berlinski is a secular Jew who parrots the same bullshit as does Steve Fuller who testified at Dover. The guy’s so postmodern that he doesn’t even believe anything he writes because the symbology he used might be totally subjective to his own self-hegemonic douchery (or something). You can use ID/Creationism to attack evolution and not be a fundie. Granted, there’s almost no one but Berlinski and Fuller for them to trot out in their dog and pony show to play the part but it stands that there are lefties and secularists who fall for this utter crap.

All that said…[M]Ann Coulter needs to give it up to Henry Rollins and “Shut the fuck up!”

Does a town consisting entirely of morons have a village idiot?

Since the interpretation of idiocy is subjective, an evolution acceptor in their town is probably considered their ‘village idiot’

As for Ann Coulter, I saw her latest book and pretty much died laughing. This woman should not be allowed to leave her house.

I’d sooner go to Sweeney Todd for a haircut. I don’t see how one would be worse than the other: be murdered and cannibalized in meat pies or have my soul sucked out of me, and become a blank, smiling automaton, while my reasoning dies a slow horrible death, and I hear the tiny screaming voice in the back of my head that was once upon a time my personality.

*shudder*

My dad found this totally unethical and underhanded using the guise of religious education to have an all-star football or basketball or whatever team.

Plus, he always felt that there wasn’t enough time in the day to teach the core subjects much less religious education. He stated if you want your kids to get a religious education enroll them in Sunday schools.

Then again, my dad is atheist (though he doesn’t label himself as such) so it isn’t surprising he has these points of view.

So, they have this school attached to it called Westminster Academy, a rival of the non-religious school down the street that I attended. If you want a funny mental image, think of these kids trying to fight the other prep school kids where I went to school. The only difference was they were skinny, white and Christian, and at my school, we were mostly skinny, white, and Jewish. I even dated someone from there (briefly, I assure you. The creationism emails freaked me out. Thank goodness my biology teacher at my high school down the street patiently answered my questions about why these emails were so wrong). The kids don’t even get a prom. The mother’s club throws them a prom like party, but it has to be an unofficial event b/c standing within a certain distance of someone of the opposite sex is teh evil. They do appear fairly normal from the outside, though, nevermind their extreme vandalizing of my school. Laws apparently don’t apply to them.

You should check out the craziness they call education. They teach language arts from the bible. I had a friend who was a biology teacher at another school, and she got her hands on their high school biology text book. It was all the crazy creationist stuff we mock, but in a textbook for kids which to me is just unconscionable.

From their website: “mathematics based on classical studies.” WTF does that even mean? Pi=3?

It’s actually a fairly respected academic program (which shows you the lovely standard we have for education in S. FL). Their kids do perform well and go on to decent colleges. They just have these crazy religious teachings thrown in to everything. Somehow they even offer AP Biology.

http://www.wacad.edu/

I second Brian. Please don’t pray for me, Christians. I’d rather get love-letters from Charles Manson.

Thanks for the heads up. I’m going to continue not watching.

http://theedgeam.com/podcast2/media/2008-07-28_spiritually_speaking_27th_july_2008.mp3

Christopher Hitchens described Heaven as a sort of celestial North Korea in which the Dear Leader must always be the object of praise and worship. He went on to add that at least in North Korea “you can fucking die”, thus escaping your sorry life once and for all, while in Heaven the fun is eternal.

So, if you are the sort to sadly shake your head, morose because I’ll never know the “joy” you feel as a Christian, perhaps even tempted to pray to god to help me come around, please realize that there is not one single aspect of Christianity I find remotely appealing, excepting perhaps the fact that it is not Islam. I do, however, remain thankful that Christianity’s vile, demeaning facets are easily outweighed by its sheer absurdity, rendering the specter of one day sharing a place with Jesus in the sky a moot point.