I just watched the latest episode of Moyers & Company with Bill Moyers. He interviewed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Haidt has a forthcoming book titled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. It was a fascinating program. I recommend it, if you haven’t watched it already.

This part of Moyers’ intro sort of sums up Haidt’s premise:

His ideas are controversial but they make you think. Haidt says, for example, that liberals misunderstand conservatives more than the other way around, and that while conservatives see self-sufficiency as a profound moral value for individuals, liberals are more focused on a public code of care and equity.

The thing about any of the social sciences is that they’re tricky to study. You can stick water in a beaker on a hot plate to measure its boiling point, but how do you measure a society’s boiling point? The social sciences are littered with the corpses of theories, plausible and crazy alike, that attempted to explain why we behave (individually or collectively) the way we do.

This Haidt guy has some interesting ideas. Is there any truth to them? I don’t know. I like things that can be measured objectively, and this isn’t it. I know I’m more partial to the ideas of George Lakoff, but I don’t know that he’s right either.

Haidt’s ideas are based on his Moral Foundations Theory. He describes it on its website:

In brief, the theory proposes that six (or more) innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. [emphasis added]

These six foundations are:

1. Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2. Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3. Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.
4. Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”
5. Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
6. Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

When they asked liberals and conservatives how strongly they felt about those issues, this is how it came out:

I guess my biggest concern is how neutrally the questions were worded. It’s extremely difficult to write bias-free questions. Even his choice of labels raises some questions. In the list above, the first word of each pair is clearly the “better” or more desirable trait. But when I see the word “authority”, for example, I have an immediate negative reaction.

I’ve always disrespected authority. And what is “legitimate authority” anyway? There is very little in this country. The politicians have authority by virtue of occupying the roles defined in the Constitution, but it is not legitimate in my view. They have not earned that authority. They bought it with massive campaign contributions from Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and a few other unelected billionaires.

Or maybe he is referring to actual legitimate authority, which would result from free and fair elections. I’m all in favor of that, but we don’t have too many of those.

I score low on one perception of the definition, but high on the other. Since I don’t know how free of bias (conscious or unconscious) his questions were worded, I don’t know how much stock to put in his results.

It sure is peculiar that the liberals are so extremely lopsided and the conservatives are so evenly distributed.

Despite my doubts, he nevertheless has some interesting things to say in the interview. It’s worth trying to listen with an open mind and learn what we can from it.

Oh, and notice at the end of the interview that he shares my opinion that the system is extremely broken. He is of the mistaken opinion that it is fixable, though.

The On the Media blog has an interesting article by PJ Vogt. He writes that he considers the above image to be one of the most memorable photos shot on the morning of Sept. 11.

I agree. The incongruity of the mundane with the horrific is riveting. The photograph also contradicts our memories of that day. Every image we’ve seen of that day, both on the day itself and in the decade since, has been of the destruction and devastation. And then there’s this photo, which contradicts all of those memories. How do we reconcile this image with those others? How do we fit this into our brain? It doesn’t match the narrative we thought we knew.

I had a second reaction, though. I’ve seen this before. Not this exact image, but all the elements. In fact, I remember reading about it back in the 1970s, in an old book in the school library.

Humorist Robert Benchley predicted this image almost 80 years ago, in an article titled “Johnny-on-the-Spot”. I’ve scanned the article and posted it below, for your edification. The book I pulled it out of is The Benchley Roundup, first published in 1954. I’m not sure when the article itself was originally published, but I’m guessing late 1920s or sometime in the 1930s.

The article is dead-on. I’ve seen lots of photos over the years of significant events, and there’s often some guy somewhere in the foreground or on the side seemingly oblivious to the momentous activity just 30 feet away. (You might find Benchley’s derby fixation strange, but everybody used to wear hats in those days. I guess in Benchley’s experience, it was always a derby.)

If you want to read more Robert Benchley, you’ll have to haunt used book stores. Project Gutenberg has one measly book online. (You can thank Disney and their lapdog tree-skier Sonny Bono, who got copyright extended until doomsday to protect the profits from Mickey Mouse.)

So now, enjoy the prescience of Robert Benchley:

When I was growing up, my family would sometimes go back to my grandfather’s farm in South Dakota for a couple of weeks in the summer. I loved that place. It was so different from the world I knew. It was so alien, in fact, that my grandparents didn’t even own a television.

In 1976, when I was in my early teens, we somehow managed to go back for six weeks (I’m not sure, but that might have been the summer of the spreader.). Interestingly, the prospect of spending a summer without a television didn’t bother me at all—except for one thing…

That was summer that NASA landed Viking 1 on Mars. That was a big event. It was NASA’s first robotic probe to land on Mars. Among the various scientific equipment aboard, it had a biology lab. They were looking for life on Mars! Microbial life seemed a very real possibility back then. This was our best chance to find it. And I was stuck in the middle of Buttsuck, South Dakota, miles from a television.

We drove there and back in our 1969 Chevy station wagon. It was decadent! It had air conditioning and seat belts. Our prior car, a 1965 Ford Mustang, had neither (Actually, I think the Mustang had seat belts in the front. I guess the rear passengers, like rabbits, were expendable.).

We’d stop for gas and food at the wonderful truck stops and tourist traps along the interstate. I loved to buy their postcards of giant grasshoppers:

… jack rabbits:

… fur-bearing trout:

… and, the most famous of all, of course, the jackalope:

A lot of the gift shops also sold this book:

It was filled with all sorts of fun trivia about U.S. history. It was a good book to read on the trip, so I bought it. Here are the titles of some of the short articles:

• The last man to invade U.S. ended up as a guest at a banquet
• She was first woman in United States to wear pants—by an act of Congress!
• Five presidents have had beards and all five were Republicans
• Famous ghosts still walk halls of White House
• The day president U.S. Grant was arrested for speeding

Some of this book’s trivia I later confirmed in other books. One or two I’ve found were common myths. But overall, it was a fun read.

I have a good memory. Looking through this book today, I see that I have actually retained most of these stories in my massive brain.

One of those articles that I always remembered was the story of the Millerites, which I have reproduced below. I remembered it during the recent Harold Camping laugh-fest.

Reading this article back then in the summer of ’76 was my first exposure to the concept of the doomsday cult. I had always known that there were crazy fundies perpetually predicting the end of the world. Until that point, I never knew that some of them were insane enough to actually abandon work, leave their fields unplanted, and sit on a hillside waiting to be raptured.

Welcome to the real America, kid. Ugly, isn’t it? (I wonder what I would have thought if I had known that 30 years later, I’d embark upon a 5+ year quest to document and expose the dangers of this insanity.)

So for your enlightenment, here is the article that I read that summer 35 years ago:

I love the last two words of that title: “It Didn’t!” Really? I would have thought he wouldn’t have needed to tell us. (At the very least, he should have preceded it with the words “Spoiler Alert!”)

That article doesn’t tell the entire story, though (and it gets a few of the minor details wrong). Those people didn’t just “[start] life all over again”. Nor did they learn their lesson. They became the Seventh Day Adventists.

Thinking back now on that article, I see a similarity between what I wanted to do that summer in 1976 and what the Millerites wanted to do in their day. Yet in that similarity I see an even bigger difference.

Both of us looked to the heavens.

The Millerites, though, were looking to a delusion of the past and hoping for the demise of mankind.

I was looking to man-made robot on Mars and dreaming of our future.

One link leads to another, and the next thing you know you’ve landed someplace strange. Tonight I ended up at My First Dictionary.

They only had crappy picture dictionaries when I was a kid. If this one had existed, I probably would have learned to read even earlier than I did.

And I would have learned at an earlier age not to be envious of other kids’ toys. I should have known they wouldn’t have them for long.

I knew the Kindle was old, but holy crap! I think it’s about time for an upgrade, Amazon!

I guess the only books you could read on it back then were steampunk novels.

And if George Lakoff published this back in 1905, why are the Democrats still losing elections? It’s the Republicans who have all the 100-year-old ideas.

Seriously, folks. We’re ten years past Y2K. How the hell can anyone be so incompetent that they’re still making this blunder? Especially on a product that didn’t even exist ten years ago?

For those of you wondering where the articles about fundies have been lately, they haven’t gone away completely. I was hoping to write a Fundie Research Council article last night, but time worked against me. I’ll try to get that done tonight. From tonight onward, whenever you think of gonorrhea, you’ll think of Tony Perkins.

Last Saturday, I went to the San Francisco Green Festival. This is my story.

The experience actually began as I was walking from BART to the Concourse Exhibition Center. I saw this spray-painted onto an overpass support:

Why do people do that? Is their message so important that they have to deface public property? Do they really think that somebody they couldn’t convert via door-to-door haranguing and prayers at graduations and highway billboards will actually be “saved” when they see some graffiti?

After running that gauntlet, I made it to the festival itself. The festival is mostly about green topics, such as recycling, alternative energy, less-toxic materials, etc. But since leftist politics are so deeply intertwined with not raping the Earth and its inhabitants for a quick buck, there were also various liberal organizations present. The problem is, the liberal tent is so large, it includes some… umm… you know… strange people. More on that in a minute.

There were lots of good panels and presentations, but I was only there for a few hours and missed most of them. I did sit in on a couple. One presentation reminded me how important it is for all of us to buy fair trade products whenever possible. As much as I support this movement, I have to draw the line at chocolate. I’ve tried most of the fair trade chocolates, and they’re just not that good. I’m sorry. I can’t change the facts. The best chocolate is made from the bones of African orphans.

One thing I’ve noticed in the conservative press, which includes most of the fundie “news” sites I visit, is the right-wing is freaking out over global warming, but for the wrong reasons. They don’t care that we’re catastrophically changing the climate at a much faster rate than any of the climate models predicted. They just deny that it’s happening. Problem solved!

One of the things they’re always screaming about is “cap -and-trade”, which is the free-enterprise way of not having to deal with a problem. You’d think they’d be in favor of it, because it’s the least painful way of pretending to be addressing the issue. I guess their motto is “Why pretend to address the issue when ignoring it is still an option?”

Anyway, the other panel I went to was a debate on whether cap-and-trade is effective enough to support. There are a lot of problems with it, but I’m not sure we’ll even be able to get that in place. Even if we do, and even if it works, it won’t work well enough. Future generations will curse our name.

We need a carbon tax. A big one.

It will never happen, though.

Humans. The only species stupid enough to willingly and knowingly drive itself into extinction.

The Stranger Side

Speaking of stupid, the Left attracts its fair share of embarrassments. Among the vendors at the show, not all were appropriate to the theme. It ranged from the illiterate to the stupid to the new-agey to the crazy to the eccentric.

The Illiterate. Take this example of the effectiveness of the American public education system. This vendor had an air filter that allowed you to “breath” clean air!

The Stupid. There was at least one booth peddling homeopathy. That’s right. They’re selling “medicine” one molecule at a time. They even pretended to make it relevant to the festival, as you can see by this picture.

“What’s green about homeopathy?” Actually, it’s probably the greenest product at the festival. It’s only water!

The New-Agey. There were several booksellers present. Here is a typical sampling of their wares:

The Crazy. Most of the vendors were polite enough to stay in their booths and wait for you to stop and look at their stuff. I guess that’s not effective if all you’re selling is crazy. As I was walking down one of the aisles, I saw a guy on crutches (For his leg. As you’ll see in a second, he relies on other crutches for his brain.) standing a couple of feet from the edge of the aisle. At first, I assumed he was just another visitor like me. As soon as I made eye contact, he said to me “Have you heard about the 9/11 firefighters?”

Since this was the Green Festival, I assumed the guy was talking about the fact that a lot of the firefighters and other rescue personnel who worked on the site that day were exposed to asbestos and other hazardous materials, and now they’re suffering health problems. I said that yes, I knew a thing or two about it. He then handed me his flyer, exposing the TRUTH about 9/11.

I looked at it and said (while trying to hold back laughter) “OH! You’re a Truther!”

He said “YES! Won’t you at least consider the evidence?”

I then turned around and realized that his booth was behind me:

As you can see, this has turned into a big business for these people. They’re turning it into another UFO industry.

The Eccentric. Finally, I came across this guy, who would write a poem about you on the spot. He had the strangest laptop I’ve ever seen:

I came across the website of some philosopher named James Spiegel, who has written a book called The Making of an Atheist. The opening paragraph on his web page caught my attention:

Sigmund Freud famously dismissed belief in God as a psychological projection caused by wishful thinking. Today many of the “new atheists”—including Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—make a similar claim, insisting that believers are delusional. Faith is a kind of cognitive disease, according to them.

Too bad he threw that last phrase (“according to them”) in there. That tells us that this guy thinks there is actually something incorrect about the idea that theism is delusional.

Christian apologists, from Dinesh D’Souza to Ravi Zacharias, have been quick to respond to the new atheists, revealing holes in their arguments and showing why theistic belief, and the Christian worldview in particular, is reasonable.

Seriously? Dinesh D’Souza? Is that the strongest card in Spiegel’s book?

In fact, the evidence for God is overwhelming, confirming the Apostle Paul’s point in Romans 1 that the reality of God is “clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20, NIV).

In other words, just look around! How could all of this have come from nothing?

That is a problem isn’t it? It’s a good thing God just didn’t appear out of nothing, then, isn’t it?

So if the evidence for God is so plain to see, then why are there atheists?

The same reason there are still monkeys.

In other words, the premise of his question is wrong (Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Mr. Spiegel?).

That is the question that prompted The Making of an Atheist.

I can think of a question to prompt my next book: The Making of a Wife Beater. If you want to know who it is about, you’ll have to buy my book.

The answer I propose turns the tables on the new atheists, as I show that unbelief is a psychological projection, a cognitive disorder arising from willful resistance to the evidence for God. In short, it is atheists who are the delusional ones.

Yes. We are willfully resisting the evidence of non-evidence as evidence.

Unlike Dawkins and his ilk, I give an account as to how the delusion occurs, showing that atheistic rejection of God is precipitated by immoral indulgences…

Haven’t you heard? The American Association of Immoral Indulgences is just like AARP. As soon as you become an atheist (or turn 50), you get a membership application in the mail.

…usually combined with some deep psychological disturbances…

Such as reading the Bible.

…such as a broken relationship with one’s father.

Wait. What?

This guy is basing his whole thesis on debunked Freudian fairy tales?

I also show how atheists suffer from what I call “paradigm-induced blindness,” as their worldview inhibits their ability to recognize the reality of God manifest in creation.

He’s right. You really have to be careful that your worldview doesn’t interfere with your ability to see evidence.

Anyway, since the new atheists are bold enough to trumpet their claim that theists are delusional, it seems appropriate that someone should be willing to propose that the opposite is true.

That would be completely appropriate, if someone could actually support such a claim.

Long-time Bay of Fundie readers are familiar with crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth, his crackpot creatard buddy Jerry Bergman, and Kevin’s endless shilling of Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents. As bad as books such as The Secret and Going Rogue are, at least they’re from reputable publishers who nominally go through the motions of vetting the content. Slaughter of the Dissidents is so bad that Kevin Wirth had to publish it himself. We have to rely on his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. As we’ve seen in numerous comments he has left here, that isn’t one of his strengths. This is the guy who, in all seriousness, compared Ben Stein to Rosa Parks. Caveat emptor!

The very first blog ever to link to Bay of Fundie was Biblioblography by the Krystalline Apostate. I was over at his blog today catching up on his posts and discovered that he has been investigating Slaughter of the Dissidents himself!

His first article is “Slaughter Of The Dissidents – No Blood, No Guts, Just Whining…”. In this article, KA looks at the web page shilling the book and shoots down some of its wilder claims. (I wrote a similar article here. Read them both and compare! Collect the whole series!)

Sure enough, Kevin Wirth’s Google Alert told him that somebody was laughing at his book, so he dropped by and left a couple of long comments. He mostly argued about what the definition of “is” is, or something. My mind wandered. Kevin Wirth is like Ray Comfort. Neither is capable of comprehending what somebody has written, so they spend all their time arguing about what they think the person wrote.

A few days later, the Krystalline Apostate posted his second article in the series. In this article, he specifically looks at the case of one of the victims whiny little creatards named Raymond Damadian. Damadian was one of the contributors to the invention of the MRI. When the Nobel committee was passing out awards later for this achievement, Damadian was passed over, allegedly because he was a creationist. Defenders of the Nobel prizes said that wasn’t the reason at all. Damadian had done some essential early work, but he hadn’t contributed to the actual later invention of the MRI.

I’m on Damadian’s side in this case. I doubt he was passed over because he was a creationist. I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that. I think he was passed over because he hadn’t contributed enough to the invention. But heck! Barrack Obama didn’t do anything, and he got a Nobel Prize! The bar seems pretty low here.

KA’s next article in this series concerns the infamous non-slaughtered Guillermo Gonzalez. The short version is that Gonzalez really was (indirectly) “slaughtered” for being a creationist. What happened is that he spent all of his time pursuing his little religious hobby (creationism) that he didn’t spend enough time doing any of the things a college professor should be doing, such as research. As a result, he was denied tenure. Oh boo hoo!

Tell you what, Gonzalez. I’m going to spend all of my waking hours the next couple of weeks playing World of Warcraft. Then after I get fired for not doing my job, I’ll bitch about being discriminated against. I fully expect you and your buddies at the Discovery Institute to give me a job then. It worked for you.

KA’s next article covers Roger Dehart. He was a public school teacher who got away with teaching creationism in his biology classes for 14 years. When the district finally caught on (and why did it take that long?), did they fire him? Did they “slaughter” him? No! They should have, but they didn’t. No. All they did was take away his biology classes and made him teach geology instead. Umm… guys. That’s not such a good idea. You see, creationists have a thing or two to say about geology as well.

Anyway, this clown later resigned and got himself a sweet gig lying to kids at a Christian school. Oh, the slaughter!

KA’s final article is about Dean Kenyon, whose career was so slaughtered that he still has it.

What really makes this article such a treat is that it (along with most of the others) has a long, rambling comment at the end posted by Kevin Wirth. You have to read his comment on this article. Here are Kevin’s actual words:

After all, that’s what you evolution folks do best! You just tell the part of the story that aligns with what is consistent with your views, and ignore or trash the more challenging stuff as irrelevant! Case closed! Nice and tidy, right?

Kevin Wirth for the win!

Note: For those who are interested, here are my articles dealing with Slaughter of the Dissidents:

• How the Fallen Have Fallen: Jerry Bergman Stoops to Kevin Wirth
• Freedom Fighter Kevin Wirth Fights Freedom
• Slaughter of the Intellect
• Kevin Wirth has the Vapors

That last article has an excellent comment by Jason Failes, who researched some of the alleged victims of this wholesale slaughter of “Darwin skeptics’” careers. Jason also has a great quote in there:

Remember, you have a right to your own opinions, not to your own facts.

[Update: Welcome to everyone coming over from Crooks and Liars! Why is it every time I write about dildos I get more traffic?]

Yesterday, I got a quick mention in Sadly, No! about an old wetsuit/dildo mishap. If you’re one of those readers, welcome! If you then came to this article in an attempt to find out what this site is about, you should know that I write about more than just dildos here. For example, today I want to talk about Glenn Beck.

OK, maybe I should rephrase that.

The story actually began two days ago. Since my bathroom is currently ripped apart and I’m replacing everything else, I decided that I might as well replace the toilet while I’m at it. I spent the last two evenings trying to buy a new one. But which to buy? There are far more choices than I imagined. Then there is color. The geniuses at Kohler decided not to use “white”. Instead, they call it “biscuit”. What retard names a toilet color after food? Now biscuits and toilets are forever linked in my mind.

Speaking of things that belong in the biscuit, Glenn Beck has a new book out. It’s laughingly titled Arguing with Idiots. When I looked at the publisher’s description on the Amazon page, this sentence jumped out at me:

Idiots can’t be identified through voting records, they can be found only by looking for people who hide behind stereotypes, embrace partisanship, and believe that bumper sticker slogans are a substitute for common sense.

Because if there’s anyone who’s stereotypically bumper sticker partisan, it’s the left:

What’s fun about books by wingnuts is reading the Amazon reviews. Let’s have a look!

This first one is my favorite. It’s written by Ashley H. Polikoff, who gives the book five stars:

hold off on all those book burnings! we got ourselves a winner!

all hail the lord. glenn beck’s gone done writ another one of these word things. he sounds reel smart-like. i aint heard of no one scorin all those touchdowns in an argument like beck did. no one arguin with an idiot like glen beck. he so smart an this book so great i took my 10 kids outta that communist factory and just school my kids at home with glenn beck. theys gonna know how to argue with them idiots… and satan. theys souls goin strait to united states of heaven.

OK, it lacks subtlety, but you have to remember the target audience. If it were more subtle, Glenn Beck’s fans wouldn’t realize they’re being skewered (although that would make it even funnier).

Here’s another five-star review; this time by Rayscann:

Got the new book today!!! SCORE!

Im soo happy I could get this book at a discount. I didn’t have much left after I bought my new TV over the weekend. An SSI check only goes soo far. Anyway I will start reading it after I pick up some groceries from church this afternoon. I hope they have pop tarts this week. People have only been donating stuff like mashed potatoes or tuna fish which are boring. This book should be cool. I can’t stand “commie-lib” big government. Its just a bunch of jerks who want to give our money to welfare cheats.

That one is a little subtler. I bet it fools a few teabeckers.

Here’s a one-star review by Robert D. Hodson Jr.:

Beck Fans Can Read?

I was really surprised to see this on the shelves. … I was surprised to see an actual book with lots of words printed with Beck’s audience obviously in mind.

In a five-star review written, I’m sure, without irony, Michael says:

Don’t let a good mind go to waste.

I found some other great one-liners in much longer reviews. Here are just the good parts of some five-star reviews:

Liberal will never be happy until they destroy this country.

Yes, sometimes it does feel like there is only one liberal in this country.

I have the Glen Beck Show on Fox News on auto-record on my DVR. I wouldn’t miss him.

Please combine that statement with your love of the Second Amendment.

WHAT OUR KIDS SHOULD BE READING IN SCHOOL

Yes, but rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?

James R. Holland gives the book five stars and writes:

Glenn Beck has been impersonating Paul Revere and William Dawes in order to warn the public of the approaching enemy. Now he is morphing from those Revolutionary War nightriders spreading the alarm to Thomas Paine the Revolution’s Pamphleteer.

That prompted L. Ripley to respond with this comment:

Hmm… morphing into Tom Paine? So Beck is opposed to organized religion, anti-death penalty, for progressive taxation, universal free education, Welfare, Social Security and the abolishment of private property rights? Wow; I did not know that.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this brilliant summation by Mick McAllister:

Glenn Beck is the NASCAR of television commentary: People watch in hopes of seeing an accident.

Which of these statements is false?

• Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic.
• John Glenn was the first American in space.
• Charles Darwin discovered evolution.

They’re all false, of course. No scholar claims that any of them are true, yet there are some folks out there who somehow got their facts confused. I’ll get to that last misconception in a moment.

The Discovery Institute is always dreaming up new ways to sabotage American science education. They employ a whole staff in this endeavor. Among their Senior Fellows are Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Benjamin Wiker. I know who those first three are, but Wiker wasn’t ringing a bell.

According to a short bio on Amazon:

He is a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical theology and is also a senior fellow with Discovery Institute. He has written several other books, most recently Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God (co-authored with Scott Hahn) and 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn’t Help.

OK, so he has a religious bent, which might color anything he writes.

He has a new book, The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin. From what I’ve seen of it, it should be subtitled The Life and Lies about Charles Darwin.

The Discovery Institute has been pushing this book for the last week. A few days ago, they told us that you can get a free chapter of the book! Here’s the pitch:

The ad makes the rather extraordinary claim that scientists are not allowed to believe in God. That probably comes as a surprise to the many scientists who do believe. Let’s see what else the ad says:

Casting aside Darwinism’s politically correct veneer, The Darwin Myth reveals:

• The Darwin Myth: Darwin insisted that evolution must be godless to be scientific

That’s just because he knew that natural explanations were sufficient to explain all of evolution. He wasn’t out to kill God. In fact, he knew his theory would throw a lot of religious people (including his wife) into a tizzy, so he withheld publication for many years. He was hardly an atheist avenger, as this ad implies.

• Charles Darwin didn’t “discover” evolution—he just put his name on it. (It was explored in the 17th Century, long before his time.)

Well they managed to get the first part of that statement correct. Evolution had been known for a while, because people saw the fossils. Animals were clearly changing over time. What Darwin came up with was an explanation for how the process worked. He also may have been the first to understand that evolution applied to all species throughout history and that everything evolved from a common ancestor. He was hardly just sticking his name on something that other people had discovered.

Throwing this statement into the ad is an interesting ploy. They’re trying to discredit Darwin in every way possible. If they can give you many examples of how he wasn’t credible or honest, then you’ll eventually start to doubt everything he said.

• Although not Darwin’s intention, Darwinism provides an open rationale for eugenics, genocide and racism

Speaking of discredited, there’s that hoary old myth. Interesting how they were eager to dispel the myth of Darwin discovering evolution, but they’re eager to perpetuate this one.

• Darwin’s own theory supported natural slavery—an institution he detested

This is a lie. Darwin’s theory showed that slavery was unnatural.

Anyway, I wanted to see what this book is all about, so I gave them one of my email addresses. There’s a little note somewhere that by giving them your address, you agree to receive their spam.

Shortly thereafter, my free chapter arrived. A day later came an email with an article by Pat Buchanan and a promise of more great articles by the likes of Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich.

Uhh, no. Time to delete that address.

So anyway, I sat down tonight to read my prize. I must say, I’m very disappointed. This so-called “chapter” is only four pages long. I was robbed! I earned a real full-length chapter! I was exposed to a Pat Buchanan article trying to acquire it. Now I understand H.P. Lovecraft. His protagonists go insane if they see Cthulhu. I, too, have been subjected to an unspeakable horror.

Anyway, I read the chapter, and it’s just an introduction to the book. It hints at the anti-evolution lies from the ad, setting the stage for what the rest of the book is about. That’s about all I can tell from what they sent me, but it’s enough. Don’t buy the book. You shouldn’t have to pay for lies. You can get all you want for free from the Discovery Institute.

To answer the quiz: Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. Alan Shepard was the first American into space (on a sub-orbital flight).

Does good comedy ever go stale? I say never!

This final one is just so perfectly underplayed, like all the best comedy. It’s by Phil Selby of The Rut, who drew the baptism comic in the last post. You will need to click on the image below to enlarge it, or go to the original source here.

You probably remember that 1954 Christian activity book that I mentioned a week ago. I only found two good images in it, but I saved the best for last. The above image is also from this book. As you can see, it lends itself beautifully to the addition of word balloons.

In fact, it’s such comedy gold that I was able to come up with eight additional captions for this thing! Seven of these “improvements” follow (I hope you aren’t on dial-up). I just stuck the eighth on the end of the Jerry Bergman article. You’ll want to look at that again, if it wasn’t there the first time you looked.

As before, if you can think of any great captions, put them in the comments. I haven’t had the woman say anything yet. Maybe you can think of that angle.