The Blasphemy Challenge has succeeded in pissing off the fundies, which was one of its unstated goals. Here’s an excerpt from Baptist Press’ Culture Digest (I always thought that’s what happened after you ate yogurt):

A radical new website is gaining popularity by challenging people to deny the existence of God, and it’s run by an atheist who was raised Catholic and claims he “became a born-again Christian when he was 13.”

There they go throwing the word “radical” around again. They use that word freely. I guess that makes it a free radical!

“I loved Jesus and he was my best friend and I talked to him and God all the time,” Brian Sapient said on ABC’s “Nightline” Jan. 30. “I have to admit that they never talked back to me, and I think some people would say that God does talk to them and I think they’re not being honest with themselves.”

How can that be? I thought Christians were always honest!

Now a dejected Sapient is part of the “Rational Response Squad,” which is behind the website www.blasphemychallenge.com and promises to give away 1,001 copies of a DVD espousing their views.

“There’s only one catch: We want your soul,” the site says. “It’s simple. You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn’t There DVD. It’s that easy.”

Somewhere in the video, the person must say the phrase “I deny the Holy Spirit.” The website explains that the phrase is required because Mark 3:29 says, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”

You’re probably familiar with the Blasphemy Challenge already. It’s been quite successful. For every video made (ultimately 1001), many more people will see it. This will help people realize that the “default view” of the Universe (Christian mythology) doesn’t have to be the only approach.

Remember that a lot of young people are stuck in stifling religious households, and they wonder why they are different. The Blasphemy Challenge helps them feel less alone. They can’t help it that they were born that way. Some people have the religion gene. Others have the brain gene.

Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that by arrogantly rebelling against God’s authority, the website implicitly acknowledges His existence.

What is “Matt” Barber doing at the “Concerned Women for America”? I thought fundies didn’t like that whole LGBT scene. Or maybe Matt had to take over, because fundies believe in “traditional” (a.k.a. oppressive) values. All of the women in the organization were home cooking dinner and squeezing out babies. Leave the policy making for the men-folk!

As for TV Matt’s assertion that “by arrogantly rebelling against God’s authority, the website implicitly acknowledges his existence,” all I can say is “In your dreams, Matt!” (Actually, I don’t want to know what’s in Matt’s dreams. He probably dreams of glamorous evening gowns, pedicures, and gossiping with the “girls”.)

Anyway, how is publicly stating that God doesn’t exist implicitly acknowledging his existence? Only in Fundie-ville do contradictions ever make sense.

Sapient is aggressively targeting teenagers by advertising his site on 25 websites frequented by teens, including Xanga, Boy Scout Trail, Teen Magazine, CosmoGirl and Seventeen, according to Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink.

“As young people are the most vulnerable to religious indoctrination, we feel it is important to reach them with the concept of challenging the doctrine they are told to unquestioningly believe,” blasphemychallenge.com says.

A noble goal it is! I’m glad there are people like Sapient in the world. I take my hat off to him! And Matt Barber probably takes his dress off.

(I wrote these next two articles a week ago. I’’ve been so busy that this is my first chance to post them.)

Baptist Press has their nuts in a knot about changes to the science standards in Kansas public schools. Check out their article Kan. board of education scraps standards questioning evolution:

The Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 Feb. 13 to rewrite the science standards for public schools for the fifth time in eight years, this time refusing to allow room for questioning the theory of evolution.

The actual standard probably isn’t written that way. It probably says you can only teach science in science class.

The new standards, which are used to develop tests that measure how well students are learning science, specifically will limit students to searching for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe.

What a radical idea! Why has science never been about seeking natural explanations for observable data? Just imagine what we could accomplish if we took that approach!

The board removed language that suggested that key evolutionary concepts are controversial and are being challenged by new research.

Maybe that’s because they aren’t controversial and aren’t being challenged by new research.

“There’s this, I think, political agenda to just ensure that evolution is the driving, underlying notion that has to be accepted in Kansas science standards in order for Kansas to keep its head up in the world, which is just bizarre,” board member Ken Willard, a Republican who voted against the most recent rewrite, told the Associated Press.

What’s bizarre is that there can be people in 21st century America who are capable of making such a statement.

John West, vice president for public policy with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, said that by voting to repeal language questioning evolution, the Kansas school board and its supporters showed closed-mindedness.

The fundie-run “Discovery Institute” is misnamed. It should be the “Discovery-Suppression Institute”, since all they want to do is bury science.

“Don’t expect the ‘mainstream’ media to notice the biting irony here: The people they like to portray as the champions of free inquiry and scientific literacy are the very ones trying to dumb-down science curricula in order to suppress information they find uncomfortable,” West wrote on the Evolution News & Views blog after the vote.

TILT! TILT! TILT! That’s the irony meter overloading. Bzzaap! Pft!! And it just shorted out! Fundies are massively irony-impaired, but they just reached a new low. Actually using the word “irony” themselves to describe this is mind-blowingly stuperific.

It’s the fundies who are trying to dumb down science curricula in order to suppress information they find uncomfortable.

“Fortunately, Americans still have the freedom to investigate the truth for themselves, which is why the Darwinists’ current strategy will be such a loser over the long term,” West added. “Trying to stamp out the discussion of ideas you don’t like is a sign of insecurity, and thoughtful people will eventually see through such tactics.”

Slack of jaw, mouth agape! I’m gobsmacked! It’s a good thing I didn’t repair the irony meter; it would have just blown again!

I was cruising the web looking for some graphics to steal borrow with attribution for the next post, when I came across a site called Science Made Stupid. It’s actually an abridged version of the book of the same name, which is sadly out of print.

It’s very funny. Go check it out!

Phil Plait is doing my job for me. He has a couple of good posts about a young-Earth creationist, named Marcus Ross, who has been granted a Ph.D. in Geosciences from Rhode Island University. In order to get the Ph.D., Ross had to lie about his belief in the age of the Earth.

Phil’s first post is titled Should Creationists be able to get PhDs in Geoscience? He answers his own question succinctly:

No.

Phil elaborates:

The basic point is: if you think the Earth is 6000 years old, yet do a PhD project where you state repeatedly that mososaurs died out 65 million years ago, then you are a liar. Period.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who don’t know how to read. He received a lot of flack from people thinking that he was somehow saying that Christians shouldn’t be awarded Ph.D.s. This forced him to clarify his already clear statements, by writing a second post:

In my opinion — and I suspect a lot of scientists would agree — someone who claims to be a YEC simply does not understand anything about science. If you think gravity is caused by pink underground unicorns drawing in golden marshmallows from the ether, then it is very clear that you are not cut out to be a scientist.

In the end, in the very end, getting a PhD is all about understanding the science. It strikes me that if someone doesn’t understand the science, they shouldn’t get the degree.

Phil points to a blog by Laurence Moran, which has more details. Go check them all out.

Apparently all of those years I spent studying evolution were wasted. According to LifeSiteNews, Ranks of Renowned Scientists Doubting Darwin’s Theory on the Rise.

Another 100 scientists have joined the ranks of scientists from around the world publicly stating their doubts about the adequacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Wow! Another 100 scientists! And not just any scientists. “Renowned” scientists! Of course, I wonder how they define a scientist. Is it anyone with a Ph.D.? That would include such pillars of the scientific community as “Dr.” James Dobson, or any other crackpot excreted from a Christian institution of “higher learning” (some of which I suspect might be nothing more than institutions of “hire” learning, if you get my drift (diploma mills, if you are driftless)).

Do they consider a scientist to be anybody teaching any subject remotely related to science (such as electrical engineering)? What about working in industry?

For one job I had, I was officially a “technician” (even though I was doing real chemistry. Those cheap bastards never promoted me or paid me what I was worth! Bitter? Me? Ha! The company self-destructed in a downward spiral of bone-headed mismanagement that would make Dilbert blush. Of course, it didn’t help any that a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired without cause ratted them out to the FDA! (I have no knowledge of who that was, honest! Really!) Ha! I dance on their grave!)

Where was I? Oh, yes, industry. In that job I had, I was officially a “technician”, but when they printed up business cards, I was inexplicably listed as “scientist”. (Apparently the company was insecure about all of the low-level people they had doing FDA-regulated work, so they told outsiders that we were all scientists. In industry, that job title is usually reserved for Ph.D.s.) Until then, I had no idea that I could earn a Ph.D. with a simple visit to the local print shop.

In another job, at a much bigger company, my job title was “chemist”, which was fairly accurate. When they were printing up business cards, they sent us forms to fill out for the printer. I guess it didn’t occur to them that some of us would take a few liberties. We were just trying to see what we could slip through the bureaucracy. One of my co-workers magically became “Tribal Chief”. I was the “Chief Science Officer”. I passed those out to all of my friends. They thought it was hilarious. Except for my mother. She’s not so culturally literate, and she still has no concept of what I do for a living, so she thought that I really was the Chief Science Officer! Oh well. Never disillusion your mother.

The point of all of this is that you can hold a job (or even a job title) and not necessarily have all of the credentials that such a job implies. What I want to know, is who are these scientists who signed the petition, and what are their qualifications? (See the update at the end of this article. I’m writing this on the train, so I don’t have internet access at the moment.)

“Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology,” says dissent list signer Dr. Michael Egnor. Egnor is a professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and an award-winning brain surgeon named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine.

Well, certainly a medical doctor should have some familiarity with the broader concepts of biology. I sure would want my doctor to understand evolution, because it’s fundamental to how the body responds to pathogens, and it also explains how new diseases and epidemics behave. (Notice how AIDS is no longer a death sentence? In the early years, you could go from diagnosis to death in 12-24 months. Today’s much longer lifespans aren’t just because of the better drugs we have now. The more virulent strains that quickly killed their host had less opportunity to infect other people, and therefore didn’t pass along their genes. The less virulent strains had ample opportunity. The virulent strains burned themselves out. The disease evolved into what we know today.)

So, they found themselves a doctor who doesn’t believe in evolution. BFD. College isn’t supposed to brainwash anyone. The guy probably went into pre-med as a fundie, having already made up his mind about evolution. The facts weren’t about to convince him otherwise. He just learned how to parrot back what he was told, in order to pass the tests, without thinking about the content. Fundies are good at reciting things that they’ve never actually thought critically about.

Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture announced last week that over 700 scientists from around the world have now signed a statement expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution.

Wait. Only 700? They’re acting like that’s a huge number. It’s not, especially if their definition of “scientist” is as expansive as I suspect.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t trust anything coming out of the Discovery Institute. It’s an extremist creationism misinformation group (among its other charming attributes). If a group of scientists said that they had a few unresolved questions about evolution, I might listen to them. However, the Discovery Institute not only rejects evolution and most of modern biology, they also reject most of the tenets of modern geology, paleontology, cosmology, and a bunch of other -ologies. These people reject almost all of reality. And I’m supposed to listen to what they have to say?

If they have any problems with evolution, there are numerous peer-reviewed journals they can publish their findings in. Oh wait. There’s that sticky little detail of peer review! They literally have no credible data to support their claims. That’s usually a deal breaker for a journal.

That’s why they have to take their case to the media. Bypass the scientific method and try to snow a gullible public. It’s the sort of intellectual fraud committed by “psychics”, “dowsers”, “astrologers”, “homeopaths”, “faith healers”, and other charlatans who are afraid to back up their claims.

The statement, located online at http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org, reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

It is encouraged. It always has been. As soon as you have some contradicting data or a plausible alternative interpretation that explains all of the data that evolution explains, you go right ahead and submit that to Science or Nature.

In fact, that’s a big misconception that the fundies keep perpetuating. Here’s the reality:

Evolution is fact. End of discussion. Get over it.

Darwinism is just one theory to explain the observable facts of evolution.

There have been numerous other theories of evolution. They’re all based on Darwinism, but they have significant differences. Punctuated Equilibrium is one I’ve always been partial to.

And guess what? All of these alternative theories have been published in major peer-reviewed journals! There you have it. Proof that careful examination of Darwinism is encouraged.

OK, fundies, put your money where your mouth is. Where’s the encouragement for the “careful examination of the evidence” for “Biblical theory” (a.k.a., fairy stories)? How about the evidence that contradicts the seven-day Genesis fantasy? How about the evidence that contradicts almost all of the Noah’s Flood delusions? Or stopping the sun? Or feeding a million people with a fish stick and a slice of Wonder bread? Oh, that’s right. We’re not allowed to ask those questions. They’re off limits.

“We know intuitively that Darwinism can accomplish some things, but not others,” added Egnor.

And I know intuitively that airplanes can’t fly. Yet all I have to do is look up and see that intuition is a terrible way to do science.

“The question is what is that boundary? Does the information content in living things exceed that boundary? Darwinists have never faced those questions. They’ve never asked scientifically if random mutation and natural selection can generate the information content in living things.”

Blow me. Of course they have. Stop inventing stories with no facts to support them. Don’t you people have enough of those already?

Update

As promised, I went by the “Dissent from Darwin” page. Right there on the front page, they list the qualifications needed to sign the statement:

If you have a Ph.D. in engineering, mathematics, computer science, biology, chemistry, or one of the other natural sciences….

So pretty much anybody with a Ph.D. in something other than the social sciences can sign their petition. Most engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists have taken very little biology. They are not qualified to make the scientific statement that “Darwinism” is inadequate. They’re welcome to hold that as a personal opinion. They can store that in their brains along with their “intuitive” knowledge that the Earth must be flat, because they can’t see a curvature when they stand in the middle of a field.

The fundies seem to be so afraid of Democrats that they will attack them in any way possible. The Traditional Values Coalition (an apt name, since they’re defending the traditional Christian values of intolerance and hate) doesn’t have a stake to burn the “witches” at, so they use inflammatory language to do so metaphorically.

The TVC has published a quick little blurb, Former Senator Edwards Supports Anti-Christian Blogobigotry:

Two rabidly anti-Christian bloggers for former Senator John Edwards have recently resigned after their vile posts were exposed by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights headed by Bill Donohue.

Calling someone “rabidly anti-Christian” is rather extreme. These two staffers must be horrible people!

Notice that they’ve got no dirt on Edwards, so they attack him by going after two mid-level staffers. Seems kind of weak to me.

Amanda Marcotte had been hired by Edwards as his Edwards for President blogmaster and Melissa McEwan was hired as the Netroots Coordinator.

Marcotte operates a blog called Pandagon; McEwan operates Shakespeare’s Sister.

I’ve read Pandagon a few times. It’s just a liberal blog. It’s not some seething, hate-filled extremist website (unlike many fundie sites I’ve seen). I’m not familiar with Shakespeare’s Sister.

Even after being shown the vile, anti-Christian posts from both of these radicals, Edwards permitted them to remain on staff. He publicly distanced himself from their comments, but did not fire them.

Does George Bush distance himself from the extreme hate espoused by people like Ralph Reed? When he does, get back to me, TVC. Until then, you have no case.

Furthermore, a “radical” is somebody who advocates or participates in violence to further a political objective. Unless you can show that these two women have done so, you are bordering on libel. (Yes, I use the term “radical right”, but that encompasses the entire fundie population, some of whom are radicals. Overly broad, yes. Libelous, no. “Keeping the extreme right, some of whom are radicals, at bay” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.)

The Catholic League has posted many of their obscene rantings on its web site to show Christians the extent of their anti-Christian hatred and bigotry. Caution: These comments are extremely offensive.

Where in the Constitution does it say you are protected from being offended? Furthermore, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is just as “radical” as these two women.

“Apparently John Edwards thought these two hateful bloggers should remain on his staff – even though he admitted their comments were distasteful,” said TVC’s Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “By allowing them to remain on his staff, Edwards was sending a strong message to his supporters that anti-Christian blogobigotry is just fine. He has lost any credibility he could possibly have with mainstream voters.

Fundies are always telling us that various candidates they don’t like have “lost credibility”. Watch for that next time. You’ll see that phrase a lot. It’s a good thing we have people who believe in talking snakes telling us what is credible.

The TVC article links to the “exposé” page at the Catholic League, where they’ve collected some of this “radical” writing. I’ve read the page. It’s certainly vulgar. It’s definitely opinionated. You might be able to call it anti-Christian, but it’s really just opposed to the extreme and ridiculous beliefs of Christians. It’s definitely not “radical”.

Darwin Day is on Feb. 12. A lot of organizations are celebrating it this weekend. If you’d like a little rationality this weekend instead of superstition, why don’t you head on over to your local celebration?

The main Darwin Day website explains what it’s all about.

The event calendar is where you can find out about what’s near you. It’s sorted alphabetically first by country, then state, then city. The list is quite long, so it takes a bit of time to load.

I previously reported on Fall Creek Baptist Church being denied the privilege of using the Super Bowl broadcast to recruit new sheeple. They wanted a special exemption to the copyright laws that would allow them to misappropriate the NFL’s intellectual property. Since they couldn’t embarrass the NFL into changing its policy, they’re trying a different approach.

Here’s the latest from Baptist Press. Most of the article whines about how they couldn’t show the game. Boo hoo. Let’s jump to the end:

“From everyone I’ve talked to, [the NFL] can say exactly what they’ve said to us,” Newland told Baptist Press Feb. 1. “Really and truly, if we’re going to be law-abiding citizens — and the Scripture teaches us that we need to obey the laws of the land — then we have no choice but to comply. If this was a matter of civil disobedience, where they were challenging us to not obey God, then that’s a whole different matter. But this doesn’t even come close to that.”

So far, so good. That actually sounds reasonable. But check out the very next paragraph:

“[W]e are going to try to get our legislators to get the law changed.”

That’s right! They want a special exemption! They want the law to apply to everyone else, but they get a special law just for them.

Spoiled rotten children. They have the reasoning power of a six-year-old.