The liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is not a government endorsement of religion, even though not all religions believe in God and many Americans are not religious.

The dissenting judge understood what’s really going on here, even if his two colleagues pretend otherwise. In his dissent, Stephen Reinhardt wrote:

All that would be required would be the deletion of the two words added by an amendment designed to promote religion and to indoctrinate schoolchildren with a religious belief.

I’ve always been troubled by two things about the Pledge of Allegiance.

First of all, why does “the freest country in the world” and “the greatest nation on Earth” (according to conservative “wisdom”) even require a loyalty oath? They are generally required by fascist, communist, and totalitarian regimes.

Pardon me, but your subconscious is showing.

My second concern, of course, is the inclusion of the malevolent deity in a patriotic oath. By declaring that the United States is subservient to God, we are actually swearing allegiance to God.

As much as I believe that the Supreme Bastard needs to be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, I’m worried that Michael Newdow’s suit will fail, especially if it succeeds.

The Americans United blog agrees with my concerns:

While the lead opinion is not well reasoned, some observers think it was inevitable. Advocates of church-state separation have been divided over Newdow’s strategy. Newdow seemed to think he could prevail before the Supreme Court. But anyone can look at the composition of the conservative Roberts’ court and see that that is highly unlikely.

And what if the Supreme Court did concur and strike down “under God”? How would Congress react? In 2002, when Newdow won his first case, members of the House of Representatives and Senate in both parties practically tripped over themselves to condemn the ruling.

Had the ruling stood, some type of ill-considered constitutional amendment would have been inevitable. Could we have stopped it? Given that most state legislatures quickly passed resolutions attacking the “under God” ruling, I wouldn’t bet my rights on that.

They then make an overly-optimistic statement:

The day may come when “under God” is removed from the Pledge – not by a court ruling but simply because our increasingly diverse society realizes it’s wrong to recklessly mix religion and patriotism.

But at least they qualify their optimism:

But that day is not coming any time soon.

Yesterday’s expected miscarriage of justice gives me the opportunity to present something else that I’ve been meaning to put in this blog since day one. Red Skelton was well-known in Hollywood for his conservative leanings. Here is a clip from his TV show in 1969. You can watch the whole thing if you want, but I’ve set this clip to start at the noteworthy part at 3:23.

I have three quick notes worth mentioning this morning.

Note 1: Oops!

I found this amusing inconsistency over at Futility Closet:

In The City of God, Augustine raises a curious question: How did Methuselah survive the flood? According to the Septuagint, the patriarch was 355 years old when Noah was born, and the deluge occurred 600 years later. Thus Methuselah was 955 at the flood–yet he lived to be 969. He was not aboard the ark, and the deluge destroyed the rest of humanity. How did Methuselah survive?

“This is a celebrated question,” wrote Jerome, “and one which has been publicly aired in argument by all the churches.” It’s largely obviated today: Most modern editions of Genesis are translated from the Masoretic text, which has Methuselah dying in the year of the flood.

I see. It’s nothing that a fast rewrite can’t fix!

Note 2: SkeptiCal

If you’re going to be anywhere near Berkeley on April 24th, you should get yourself over to SkeptiCal, a mini skeptics’ convention.

Note 3: Who?

I recently discovered a fundie “news” and opinion site called The Reality Check. That’s right. They actually use the word “reality” to describe their perception of the world!

Anyway, they tell us that some nobody named Orly Taitz is running for California Secretary of State:

Dr. Orly Taitz, ESQ, who has championed the eligibility issue of Barack Hussein Obama, has thrown her hat in the ring and entered Republican party primary for the Secretary of State of CA.

OK. We’ve seen Birthers before.

If and when elected Dr. Taitz will be able to make sure all the candidates are providing genuine vital records, before they appear on the ballot.
…
Her opponent in the Republican primary is a former football player Damon Dunn.… First time he reportedly registered as Republican, was 10 months ago in the special election in May of 2009. Since one has to be registered with the certain party for at least a year before running as a candidate for that party, Mr. Dunn does not appear to be eligible to run. Dr. Taitz supporters are asked to contact the office of the Secretary of State, Registrar of Voters and Attorney General and ask to investigate this matter.

Orly Taitz seems to be obsessed with other people’s eligibility for office. I guess that’s all the Republicans have got left.

This makes Orly eminently qualified herself.

They’re obscene!

They are very clear violations of the Establishment Clause. They don’t belong in a classroom. Thanks to an activist judge appointed by George W Bush and rubber-stamped by the Republican Senate in 2004, a San Diego school teacher now has the right to impose his religious views upon his students.

A press release by the über-fundie Constitution-hating Thomas More Law Center tells us:

California Federal District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez ruled late this past Friday that the Poway Unified School District in San Diego, CA, violated math teacher Bradley Johnson’s constitutional rights when it ordered him to remove two patriotic banners from the walls of his classroom because they “over-emphasized” God.

Apparently the rights of the teacher, who is a representative of the state while teaching, take precedence over the rights of hundreds of students, who are compelled by the state to attend this school.

Judge Benitez’s 32-page opinion was strongly worded and critical of the Poway school districts aversion to mentioning God: “…That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.”

Fine. Teach that as part of the history curriculum. And also teach that many of the founding fathers were atheist, agnostic, or deist. That would put things in proper historical context. Hanging up two 7-foot pro-God recruitment banners in school is not teaching “historical fact”.

Here’s a quiz: What was Snopes’ determination about this picture?

I hope you got our quiz question correct!

The sad fact, though, is that most of this picture’s target audience will get that question wrong.

Why is that? After all, their brains appear to have the capacity to process the image critically.

Maybe it’s because most of these same people don’t believe in evolution. If they didn’t evolve, then, ipso facto, they’re still using the brain on the left side of this diagram!

Sometimes old advertisements are unintentionally prescient. The above ad actually is talking about all of the Catholic-bashing propaganda that Protestant groups love to spread around. It turns out all of those warnings about the Catholic Church were right, but for the wrong reasons.

I came across three interesting articles this last week. I thought I’d pass them along.

Somebody Went Postal on Him

Over at the WFMU blog is “The Ballad Of The Walking Postman”. It’s a tale from the Civil Rights Era. Here’s what WFMU says about it:

Today’s musical selection tells the story of Bill Moore, a white civil rights protester from Baltimore who was murdered in rural Alabama in April 1963 while on a one man Freedom Walk. He was killed on the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi where he planned to hand deliver to governor Ross Barnett a letter imploring him to accept racial equality and integration.

On his walk, Moore promoted his agenda by wearing sandwich board type signs reading “Equal Rights For All – Mississippi Or Bust” and “End Segregation In America – Eat At Joe’s Both Black & White.”

That alone would have been provocative enough to warrant concern for his safety. But Moore, a committed atheist, also pushed a cart displaying a “wanted” poster adorned with a sketch of Jesus that was captioned “Jesus Christ – Wanted for sedition, criminal anarchy, vagrancy, and conspiring to overthrow the established government.”

Moore had been warned of the danger of undertaking the march by himself while carrying such signs through small towns across the deep South, but he was undeterred. On the third day of his journey, his dead body was found along the side of the road about an hour northeast of Birmingham. He’d been shot twice in the head. An arrest was made, but the grand jury neglected to issue an indictment so no one was ever convicted.

If you go over to the WFMU website, you can download an MP3 of the mediocre memorial song, “The Ballad Of The Walking Postman”.

Christianity as Social Disease

Jeff Eyges alerted me to this article: “Christianity’s early days debated by scientists”. He wanted me to see how retarded some of the commenters are. That’s sort of a given on the internet. I actually found the article itself of more interest, at least a couple of parts of it.

There was a very interesting sentence in the article. Actually, it’s the first half of the sentence that is interesting:

Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, of course, after the death of Jesus around 33 AD, moving from a persecuted minority in the time of the Roman emperor Nero in 64 AD…

The remainder of that sentence is then completely botched in the original article. The rest of the sentence should be:

…to perceived persecuted minority today.

The article also discusses several possible models for how Christianity spread. The one I like is described this way:

The “social” model, where every exposure to an early Christian is seen as possibly leading to a pagan converting, much like the chances of catching a cold.

Don’t yell at me. I’m not the one comparing Christianity to a disease.

Fiction that is Stranger than Fiction

I came across a fascinating website: The Continent of Lost Anime that Time Forgot. It tells us about some of the strangest Japanese pop-culture you’ve never seen.

There is the bizarre journey inside the abnormal Japanese body, produced by the Japanese Rice Growers’ Council.

There is an especially disastrous manga version of Quincy, M.E. (not to be confused with the especially disastrous Windows ME).

There is a simplistic rip-off of Space Battleship Yamato. Not long after the show’s premature cancellation, the producer killed himself in shame. Why couldn’t he have done that before creating this embarrassment?

Next we have a truly bizarre creation that exploits the unhealthy Japanese fixation on underage girls. This show is actually called (loosely translated): We Swear to God, She’s 19 Years Old: Fetishtastic

Finally, we have the religious hired-guns of Hikyou-Kisei Studios. Are you a religion? Do you have money? Do you want to have a cartoon made?

The first example of what they produced was… well, let’s let the website describe it:

[I]t features the adventures of two children, Cash and Penny, who travel around the world accompanied by the disembodied head of preacher Robert Tilton and learn about the importance of giving money (to Robert Tilton)…

If you don’t like that religion, there is always Satanism:

[T]wo children named Damien and Rosemary learn about Satanism by going backward and forward in time with their talking pet goat, Anton.

Wait a minute. A story about The Pet Goat? Stay away. That never ends well.

If that doesn’t work for you, whip out your E-meters! We’re going to explore Scientology!

[T]wo school children, Tom and Nicole, who traveled backward and forward in time accompanied by Elron, a clam who hoped one day to become “clear” and thus a true human being instead of a shellfish.

I alerted ParrotLover to The Continent of Lost Anime that Time Forgot. I was curious how he’d react, since he’s a connoisseur of better anime. I hope he doesn’t mind my reprinting his comments:

Holy crap! I know Japan is weird (by our standards) and that’s part of the reason I am absolutely in love with their culture. The first two in that list [rice & fetish] totally didn’t surprise me. Even the author seemed bothered by the fetish robot and the boy screaming, but to me it’s just a Japan anime company beating the crazy mental illness fetishes on the chans by about 10 years and portraying them through the eyes of a very girl-shy Japanese teenage boy (which is a pretty common character in anime). Crushing? Vore? In anime in the 90s? Thank you, Japan, for not disappointing.

But even knowing that, I was absolutely perplexed by the religious anime. What. The. Fuck?! I could say “awesome” but that would not in any way describe level at which my jaw was on the floor at pure stunning amazement at the weirdness that can and does come out of Japan on a regular basis. Japan found a new way to amaze me in its weirdness—I thought I had seen it all. And for that, I bow to them.

I hope it’s real and not made up. Because if it’s made up, I will be disappointed.

I’m pretty sure it’s real. Nobody could make this stuff up. Except the Japanese.

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.

I received an email from Mike Huckabee. After discovering in 2008 that there weren’t quite enough fundies (yet) to propel him into the White House, he formed a political action committee. The purpose was to continue to tap fundies for as much money as he could while using that money to buy influence within the Republican party. He’s hoping this influence will pay off the next time he runs for Pope. Pope, after all, is what this theocrat wants to turn the presidency into.

This particular email, however, wasn’t about destroying the First Amendment. There’s plenty of time for that later! What he wants now is to pretend to be a fiscal conservative.

There are almost no fiscal conservatives of any prominence in the Republican party. There are lots of pretend fiscal conservatives, but none who live the values.

I’ve noticed almost all Republicans saying the same thing right now. Nothing in this particular email is unique to Huckabee, but it’s as good an example as any of them. Let’s take a quick look at it. (He doesn’t have this email on his website, but I did find a copy posted at a lunatic-fringe internet forum.)

Huckabee tells us about one of the commercials on the Super Bowl:

A car company had a commercial that had an interesting reference to Green Police giving people tickets for their lifestyle choices. For some of us that’s not too far of a stretch for a government growing bigger and bigger by the day under this administration and this Congress.
…
What we really need is a cop to rein this Congress and administration in. Someone or something to check their power grab and protect the taxpayers of this nation who don’t want their hopes and dreams crippled by a burdensome national debt.

He’s right. The national debt is now staggering. It is a straight-jacket on the economy and will be a devastating burden on generations to come. How did we get in this mess?

The following chart (from Wikipedia) shows the public debt in two ways: In dollars (not adjusted for inflation) on top and as percentage of GDP on the bottom. (BTW, the public debt is a bit different from national debt, but I couldn’t find that chart. This will have to suffice.)

Funny thing about that chart.

The pink bands represent Republican presidents. The blue bands represent Democratic presidents.

It’s a good thing we’ve had to suffer the occasional “big government”, “big spending” Democrat. I don’t think we could have survived any more “fiscally-responsible” Republicans.

I bet you guys thought I forgot about this! Way back in August, I posted this genuine bona-fide Astroboy comic book scene and asked if anybody could come up with some good captions. I was expecting to get back to it a couple of weeks later. What I didn’t count on was having to live in a hotel for nine weeks, and then getting hammered by other priorities.

But Astroboy has returned, and he has the best of your proposed captions to show for it!

If you think of any additional captions, go ahead and leave them in the comments. If I get any especially funny ones, I’ll make some more cartoons.

One of Northern California’s more prominent peaks is Mount Diablo. The mountain has been called that since the early 1800s. “Diablo” is the Spanish word for “devil”. You can probably anticipate where this story is going.

Yup! That’s right! A fundie wants to rename it! According to the Contra Costa Times, a God-botherer who is scared of his own shadow has been trying to rename the mountain since 2005. He has just recently filed another request:

[Arthur] Mijares, a devout Christian, says he believes the word “Diablo” — Spanish for “devil” — is “derogatory and profane”

But wait! There’s more! Not only is he offended, but he claims that the current name violates government policy on naming geological features:

Mijares argued that the devil, or “diablo,” was a “living person” so that name should also be prohibited.

So what name does this über-conservative want applied to the peak?

Mount Reagan.

The latest Carnival of the Godless is godlessly carnivaling at Right to Think. There’s a bunch of stuff over there. I really liked “Against the Gods: Arguments Against God’s Existence” by Ken at Arizona Atheist. It’s a long, thoughtful argument that refutes many of the arguments for God’s existence. Check it out.

I also have to put in a strong recommendation for “The Republican Master Plan” at Polymath From Portsmouth. You’ll want to read it.

I haven’t been trying to neglect the blog lately. I was hoping to cut back to two or three articles per week, not two or three weeks per article. It’s amazing how merely re-prioritizing the blog from #1 hobby to #2 hobby has robbed it of so much attention. The photography class I’m taking ends in March, so this isn’t permanent.

The latest edition of the Skeptics’ Circle has just arrived at The SkeptVet Blog. It’s definitely a good one. It’s jammed full of great articles. You need to go check it out.

The best article of the bunch is “Discovery Channel: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” by Akusai at Action Skeptics. I gave up my cable TV almost two years ago, so I still have favorable memories of the Discovery Channel. This was the home of Mythbusters, after all. Sure, many of the Discovery Channel’s shows had succumbed to the Least Common Denominator, but at least they didn’t have any of those horrible ghost-hunting shows. Then lately I started hearing about some horrid dreck called Ghost Lab. And it’s on the Discovery Channel! How depressing.

Anyway, Akusai fills us in on what little is still good on the Discovery Channel. He lists Mythbusters first, but even that is apparently sliding. Say it isn’t so!

He also mentions a show I’ve never heard of: Time Warp. Apparently the program is full of all sorts of amazing footage of ordinary things photographed in high-speed video. That sounds like a great show. In fact, I was experimenting with high-speed photography myself last Sunday (See result above. That was shot at 1/2000th of a second.).

Akusai then goes on to tell us about the Bad and the Ugly on the Discovery Channel. Some of it sounds very ugly. If you’re as disgusted as I am with the dumbing-down of science television, you should go read “Discovery Channel: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. After that, check out the remainder of the Skeptics’ Circle.