(via Pharyngula)

Carnival of the Godless #85 is up over at Greta Christina’s blog. She has posted two versions. One has “clean” pictures, and the other is illustrated with slighty-bawdy pulp and paperback covers.

The main article I want to call your attention to is “Why Mike Huckabee Hates America” by Alexander the Atheist. It’s an excellent summary of why Huckabee is dangerous, and it demonstrates that this loon does indeed hate America.

Several other articles relate to topics that have been discussed here lately.

I’m sure you remember my recent article about fundie milk. In that vein, CAE at Vwxynot tells us about fundie pasta. Meanwhile, Aussie Daniel Kinsman, the 327th Male, exclaims “Oh shit, I’ve been giving theists money!” (see image above)

I’d like to add an addendum to my fundie milk article. I just found some faggots. Enjoy them with your homo milk.

Back in October, I wrote about fundie paranoia that “In God We Trust” was going to disappear from our money. Holly Ord at Menstrual Poetry tells us that fundie paranoia has forced the mint to move the motto back onto the face of the coins.

I came across the Hysterical Raisins web site. This guy/gal/desiccated grape takes DVD covers and modifies them for political humor. Here are a few I liked. There’s lots more where these came from.

The irony flooding out of the Discovery Institute these days would make Noah nervous.

Their website devoted to debunking “Darwinism” has an article titled “Dr. Novella’s ‘Every Single Prediction’ in the Mind-Brain Problem”. The problem the Discovery Institute has with evolution and other science is that it is “materialistic”. That doesn’t mean science wants to own big-screen high-def plasma TVs. It means that there is a natural, real-world explanation for all phenomena we observe in our universe. To quote Wikipedia: “all phenomena are the result of material interactions”.

The problem with this view is that it leaves no room for God. That freaks out the DI. That’s their whole motivation for hating evolution and trying to suppress the teaching of it.

The DI’s article begins:

Atheist-materialist Dr. Steven Novella…

This is double-flag code-speak for the faithful. “OMG! He’s an atheist and a materialist! Bar the doors! Hide the children! He’s come to destroy our way of life!”

…is confident: all of our experiences and awareness arise from brain matter. There is no soul, no immaterial mind, separate from the brain itself.

You can see why they feel so threatened. In fact, this is worse than evolution to them. At least in evolution there is a little bit of wiggle room. That’s why they invented Intelligent Design creationism (“Accept no substitutes! If it doesn’t say Intelligent Design creationism, it’s just some crappy Chinese creationism! Make sure you buy your delusional ideas from the masters of delusion! Home-grown. Seattle-brewed. Mmmmmm! Discovery Institute Intelligent Design creationism!”).

The DI continues:

According to Dr. Novella, a neurologist at Yale, the debate is over, and all that is left to do is to eradicate a few stubborn pockets of resistance to the theory that the mind is merely a secretion of the brain, just as bile is a secretion of the liver.

Note how they subtly equate Dr. Novella’s theory with bile? Oh there’s bile in their article all right, but it isn’t coming from Dr. Novella!

Next, the article quotes Dr. Novella himself:

“The materialist hypothesis — that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated.”

Here’s the part where I partially agree with the Discovery Institute. I get nervous when a scientist makes a broad, sweeping claim like that. Science can never know anything with 100% certainty. Some things we know with 99.999…% certainty. Everything else is known with a bit less certainty than that. That’s why scientists usually speak with an “out”: “The data are consistent with…”

Dr. Novella wrote the quoted sentence in his blog. He was speaking to a general audience and was trying to convey the extent to which we are confident in the materialistic theory of the brain. In those situations, the speech has to be more accessible to the audience. If he spoke in technobabble, people would get confused and wander off, probably ending up at Ken Ham’s creation museum in Kentucky.

It’s also important to look at the very next sentence that Dr. Novella wrote. This is from his blog, and it’s the part that the Discovery Institute left off:

Every single question that can be answered scientifically — with observation and evidence — that takes the form: “If the brain causes the mind then…” has been resolved in favor of that hypothesis.

This sentence qualifies the first. It is also a bit less sweeping. What he is saying is “Within the limits of science, all questions have been resolved in favor of the hypothesis.” Science is an ongoing process. It is always being refined. There could be some discovery tomorrow that contradicts the theory. Then the scientists would conduct additional experiments to confirm the observation. If it holds up, then the theory would be modified to accommodate it. We would then be even closer to an understanding of the brain.

But of course, this is too subtle and nuanced for the Discovery Institute’s quote miners. Let’s now return to the Discovery Institute article about Dr. Novella’s research:

A bit of advice: whenever a scientist says of his own theory that “every single prediction has been validated”, you’re being had.

I would agree with this, but remember that’s not quite what Dr. Novella said.

No scientific theory has had ‘every single prediction’ validated. All theories accord with evidence in some ways, and are inconsistent in others.

OK, that’s fair. Wow! The Discovery Institute managed to write two whole sentences without lying once! But now get ready for the howler:

Successful scientific theories prevail on the preponderance of the evidence, not validation of “every single prediction”. Real science lacks the precision of ideology. [emphasis added]

Woo hoo! Bop! Bingo! Zap!

The DI has spent years trying to sell us on ID creationism as if it’s some sort of real scientific theory, but they’ve never given us one shred of unambiguous data. Intelligent Design creationism is nothing BUT ideology!

News reports are now coming in that the Discovery Institute was just washed away in a flood of irony.

The 58th Carnival of the Liberals is now up over at Liberal England.

My favorite article from this edition is “Love, Marriage, and the Church” by Seth Pickens. Seth is Associate Pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church in Harlem, New York. In this excellent article, he advocates tolerance for gays, and he discards the silly “Adam and Steve” argument put forth by the bigoted.

Speaking of Steve…

This is unrelated to the Carnival, but Seth’s article reminded me of the very first real article I wrote for this blog. If you want to see some vintage Bay of Fundie (circa 2006), delve into the archive and check out “Adam and Who?” It’s a tongue-in-cheek (just don’t ask which cheek) “proof” that God really did create Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.

Mike Huckabee is my own personal friend. I know this, because he sends me an email every day. Funny thing, though. At the end of every email, he asks me for money. He acts more like a relative.

I had signed up for his mailing list, because I wanted to keep an eye on him. The email he sent me yesterday is typical:

The first question I am often asked these days is: “Why are you still running for President?”

Why don’t you answer this one instead, Mike: “Why did you even start?”

It is because I believe that I am the best candidate to represent you in the fall against the Democrats.

He’s obviously wrong on that count. I wonder if there’s a subliminal message in that sentence, though. He wrote “the fall against the Democrats”. Is he subconsciously trying to equate electing a Democrat with Adam & Eve’s fall? With any other candidate, I’d never even think of this. Huckabee, though, gave us this allegedly non-subliminal ad:

His letter continues:

I have core conservative beliefs that I have never wavered from:

No, that’s OK! Feel free to waver!

I believe in the Human Life Amendment and I will fight for it from Day 1 of my Presidency.

“Day 1” is quite telling. It’s the day of the pregnancy when he thinks that a living, breathing, thinking, full-fledged citizen of the United States is created. The flaw in that argument is that none of those things is true. By pretending it is, then he is taking away the rights of real living, breathing, thinking, and full-fledged citizens.

I believe in the Marriage Amendment.

The purpose of the Constitution is to define the limits of governmental power and to define the rights of the citizens. Amendments are made to the Constitution as the need arises to grant more rights to the citizens, not to take them away.

This is also a power grab by the federal government. Marriage has always been a state matter. You’d think a state governor would be sensitive to that.

I believe in massive tax reform and am an advocate of the FairTax.

I’m not an expert on the FairTax, but a lot of economists think it’s unworkable and unfair.

I believe that President Bush’s tax cuts should be made permanent.

Bush’s tax cuts benefited the wealthy far more than the working class. Is this the type of president you want? Do you want to vote for somebody who is always looking out for the welfare of the rich?

Then there’s the problem of the trillion-dollar Iraq war. How are we going to pay for what we’ve done so far, never mind the decades of occupation to come.

I believe in the Surge, our troops and General Petraeus.

He’s confounding issues here to make it hard to oppose this statement. The Surge isn’t sustainable, and it has had only mixed results. What Huckabee is really saying here is that he’s as much of a hawk as McCain. All the Republican party can offer us in this election is untold more years of an unjust and costly war.

I believe the 2nd amendment is one of the best ways to protect us from tyranny…

’Cuz we all know it worked so well protecting us from George W Bush, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, etc.

…and I will work tirelessly to protect it from activist judges.

This is just a conservative buzzword. Republicans salivate every time they hear it. They’re such good lapdogs.

I believe the best judge is a conservative judge that won’t legislate from the bench.

I believe in conservative judges too, like those on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges who will conserve our rights, as granted by the Constitution.

And “legislate from the bench” is another meaningless buzzword. Don’t slip. There’s a lot of dog slobber on the floor.

These are some of the reasons why I am running for President and let me also say that YOU are another reason.  I am running to give you a voice in the process.  To lift up your voice with mine and to tell our Party and our government that we need to do better.  We need to think big and fight for our ideas.

If Huckabee truly cared about any of us, he never would have entered the race.

If you do a Google search on “fundie”, you sometimes find odd things. Such as fundie milk. Hill Country Gal picks up the story:

So, we were at the grocery store & Hubby walked over to get some milk. I NEVER drink the stuff so it’s his job to pick out what brand of milk he wants for his cereal.

I’m 2 AISLES over when I hear him

Hubby: “What the hell is this?”

Pause.

Hubby: “I will NOT buy fundie milk.”

Fundie milk?

I basically broke out in a full-tilt run to the milk aisle.

Hubby was standing there with this brand in his hand.

There were 4 people with their grocery carts standing there staring at him.

Me: “Fundie milk?”

Hubby: “Look at this.”

Pause.

Hubby: “I will NOT buy milk that quotes Deuteronomy.”

Oh, he’s such a LIAR kidder some times.

I took the jug out of his hand and read the label.

“from Deuteronomy 26:9, ‘He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.’” See for yourself here.

Whoa.

Fundie milk.

It turns out this dairy is in — wait for it — Texas! We all knew it had to be one of those states, didn’t we?

I always wondered why some people are so insecure about their faith that they have to plaster Bible verses on everything they touch. Somehow by printing it everywhere, they’re saying “See? We believe in God! Really we do!” Or maybe they think that by converting others, their choice of religion will become valid. If everyone else believes it, it must be true!

Alaska Airlines is famous for printing Bible verses on little sheets they include with your meal. You can pray all you want. It won’t make the food taste any better. Or maybe they don’t trust their maintenance crew, and they’re giving everybody a chance at a deathbed conversion.

I’m not offended by the verse. I think it’s a shallow attempt at piety. Again, who are they trying to fool here? Besides, I get the satisfaction of throwing the verse away. Ordinarily if someone were to see you throwing away something Biblical, they might get offended. Throwing Jesus in the garbage is usually considered blasphemy. But in this case, everybody on the plane is doing the same thing! Kind of cheapens the religion, if you ask me.

The most notorious example of putting religious verse on a product label comes to us from Dr. Bronner’s soap. Here’s a scaled-down view of their label:

Yes, every part of that label that isn’t needed for product information is devoted to quotations. Here’s a closer look at just one piece:

The quotes are actually from a variety of sources and a variety of religions. The guy was into promoting the “one true faith”, which was somehow a homogenization of all religions together.

I haven’t bothered to look, but I’d be willing to bet there is at least one quote from the Koran on there. I wonder how the Muslims feel about people throwing pieces of the Koran into the garbage.

Supermarket Finds

Getting back to the milk, I wanted to balance out the fundie milk with anti-fundie milk — the type that would make Fred Phelps have a hemorrhage. These aren’t Photoshopped:

Note the Canadian maple leaf. Then we have this stuff, which is even more suspicious:

These (plus the one at the top of this post) are all from Canada. I guess they don’t think like fourth-graders up there.

While I was looking for those pictures, I found this:

That’s what penicillin is for.

Again, it’s from Canada. Taken collectively, I don’t know what all of these pictures say about those people.

J. Brent Walker is Executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee. He is a regular contributor to the On Faith column at Newsweek/Washingon Post. This week’s article is titled “Secularism, Properly Understood, Is Not a Bad Word”. He writes:

Has this year’s presidential campaign become too religious?

I would say yes. All we hear about is Romney’s Mormonism and Obama’s alleged Muslimness. I do think that somebody vowing to never vote for Mitt Romney because he is Mormon is a bigot. (And somebody vowing to not vote for Obama because of an internet rumor that he’s a closet Muslim would be downright retarded.)

What counts is how the candidate acts on that faith. Vowing to never vote for Mike Huckabee is not bigotry; it’s self preservation. Huckabee has vowed to amend the Constitution to make it look more like the Bible. It’s what the candidate says that counts.

Talking about Romney’s religion to the huge extent that the media has is ridiculous. The media might be reflecting the public’s prejudice. If that’s the case, it just illustrates how bigoted many Christians are, and it belies the claim of the Christians about how tolerant their religion is.

Talking about Huckabee’s religion is mostly Huckabee’s own fault. The guy is a dangerous theocrat. Fortunately, he is not smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it until after he’s elected.

Walker’s article continues:

Separation of church and state does not require a segregation of religion from politics nor does it strip the public square of talk about religion.

That is true, but I wish we were a more advanced civilization (like Europe), where the constant need to inject God into politics is considered unseemly.

The institutional and functional separation between church and state does not prevent public officials’ religious convictions from playing a part in the formation of public policy (as long as the law has a primary purpose and effect that does not advance religion).

That’s a fair statement. You can’t separate the person from his religion in many cases. You can be opposed to capital punishment, for example, for all sorts of philosophical and legal reasons, or you can be opposed for religious reasons. It’s just that when it is time to make a decision about this as a lawmaker, the decision should be based on the philosophical and legal arguments.

That’s what is so bad about George Bush. He made his decision to ban stem cell research solely on his warped religious views. There are a (very) few legal and philosophical arguments against stem cell research, but Bush didn’t make the decision based on them. He prayed. This self-identified “decider” asked God to decide for him.

Nor does it mean that candidates for office cannot discuss their religious beliefs and other values and, specifically, how these would inform the candidates’ leadership style and policy positions.

This is actually something I would want to know, because I don’t want us to elect another Bush.

One of the reasons candidates are eager to talk about their religion is that 85-90 percent of the electorate claims to be religious themselves. Broad religious claims, if used as a generic substitute for descriptive policies, can both harm religion and political debate.

We’ve seen that to some extent in this current campaign.

[A]theists and agnostics should enjoy full rights of American citizenship and are as moral, if not more so, than many people of faith.

Some theists get it!

Their patriotism and dedication to democracy belie the myth that Gov. Romney peddled in his speech on his Mormonism that freedom can thrive only when supported by faith.

And some theists don’t.

The First Amendment’s religion clauses — no establishment and free exercise — require the government to be neutral toward religion, not taking sides in matters of faith, but leaving it to voluntary, individual decisions and private religious associations. Many of the candidates for president, including candidates of deep personal faith, believe in this vision for our body politic and understand it is part of the mainstream of our constitutional scheme.

But at least one candidate (hmmmm… I wonder who that would be?) doesn’t.

Secularism, properly understood, is not a bad word. Our government should not be hostile to religion, but it must remain religiously neutral.

Question for all the Baptists out there: Why do you keep elevating the extremists among you (Falwell, Robertson, et al) when you have rational moderates like J. Brent Walker among your ranks?