The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design — which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator — alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution would only cause confusion…

Evolution represents “the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth” and the debate in the United States was “polluted by political positions,” wrote Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at Italy’s Bologna University

Ha! IDiots, even the Vatican says you are full of shit.

Now get the hell out of our public schools with your schlock science. You’re gonna lose.

The article states that ID has few supporters outside of the United States Baby Jeebusland. Whadda surprise.

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This would eventually put best loans credit bad or in this case, Bell Mobility out of business.

Just a follow-up and update…

Calif. School Scraps ‘Intelligent Design’

FRESNO, Calif. – Under legal pressure, a rural school district Tuesday canceled an elective philosophy course on “intelligent design” and agreed never to promote the topic in class again. [...] Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who taught “Philosophy of Design,” defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise. “I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach,” she wrote.

I am sure many of you have heard this. Slightly older routine from our pal George. One of the most upfront assaults on belief in the sky daddy by any stand-up comic ever.

Listen to it here (11 minutes). Read it here.

I always try to imagine the horrified expressions on some of the audience members’ faces whenever I hear this.

Yes! A win for the good guys at SCOTUS: Oregon assisted suicide law upheld:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Oregon’s one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die. Justices, on a 6-3 vote in which chief justice John Roberts was on the losing side, said the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people trumped federal authority to regulate doctors.

But before we get comfortable: In the 6-3 decision, it was Roberts, Thomas and Scalia who cast the 3 dissenting votes. Hmm, it’s the three pals of the Pope Joey Ratzo and his invisible friend Jeebus! And unless the Dems grow some balls in the next week and filibuster till hell freezes over, we’re gonna be gettin’ another Katlicker on the court soon.

Last year, Bob posted on a survey of Xian teens and what they actually seemed to believe (see the post “Dumb-Ass Teen Believers”). Since then, the survey results have been turned into a book (Soul Searching : The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers), and the authors have come up with a picture of the actual religious beliefs that they think dominates the world-view of of nominally Xian teens — and it’s not traditional Xianity. They call it “Moral therapeutic Deism”.

Of course, the serious Xians are very concerned by this. As a representative commentary American Family Association’s “Agape Press News” piece “God, Religion … Whatever — Are Our Churchgoing Youth Falling Away from the Faith?” puts it:

…the very thought that our children may be falling away from Christianity is — or should be — terrifying… What Soul Searching reveals is a generation of kids who claim to be Christian, but many of whose beliefs are not even remotely orthodox… [the researchers say] “Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.”

So what is this “terrifying” and “pathetic” alternative of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”? Roughly, it’s “moralistic” not in the sense of having rigid moral judgements, but “because they see faith as being essentially related to mere [my emphasis] human goodness”. That is, according to Soul Searching, teens think “that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of ones health, and doing ones best to be successful.”

Shit! No wonder they’re freaked out! If “mere” human goodness is the central goal of faith, then obviously all you have to do is get that “mere” goodness by some other means, and blammo! Faith smacked down with other old behavior-control tricks, like ice water enemas to stop masturbation.

Soul Searching paints a picture of teens who “do not view religion as necessary for anyone being good because they see many means to being good and many good non-religious people… [they] conclude that religion is a non-necessary condition for achieving one of [religion's] primary functions… [they] construct religion in non-essential terms, as an optional individual lifestyle choice that does indeed help many people but is certainly not itself ultimately necessary.”

As for “therapeutic”? That’s the idea that “faith is meant to make a person happy, and help him get through life — much as a therapist does”; according to the book, “what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.” Which obviously puts it in competition with Zoloft, I suppose. But in any case, the point of religious faith was absolutely not to make life harder; as the authors say, “our interviews almost never uncovered among teens was a view that religion summons people to embrace an obedience to truth regardless of the personal consequences or rewards.”

As for “deism”: By this, they mean to evoke the sense of a God who is uninvolved in person and day-to-day goings-on of the world — “often described by teens as ‘watching over everything from above’”, but not playing an active part.

Given all this, it’s no wonder that the serious Xians are worried by the idea that especially amount the youth, “a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” God is reduced to one possible psychological technique among many, which may help you in being happy and decent to others, but isn’t necessary, or the only way, to achieve that real good of happiness and decency.

So where do I sign up? Other than empirical matters about how successful this particular psychological trick is in the production of happy and morally decent lives (I think it’s far less good and comes with far more risks than most of them do, obviously), I’m mostly happy with all this.

There’s surely a slight downside for our side: By stripping God of much of the concrete reality that the traditional conception has, we as atheists may also lose some of the toeholds that ground good metaphysical arguments against theism. After all, the less you believe in God as a real entity of power, personality, goodness, knowledge, and fine hosting talents for the afterlife, the less you have nutty views that I can crush with the power of logic.

But that downside for the atheist seems more than made up for by the the pathetic emasculating and disempowering that God receives. If I can make God just one more competitor in the self-help business (as in “God is My Therapist”) I’ll be happy to take him on there. I might not be able to gut him whole with the problem of evil or the paradox or foreknowledge and freedom any more, but I’ll be happy to engage Him in a fair fight for human happiness and flourishing. Frankly, Prozac and Tony Robbins will kick his ass all the way back to the myths of ancient Galilee, where He belongs.movies banks brianamovies female ejaculation freemovies masturbationblowjob clips movieride sybian moviemovies shemalesex movie freemovies rape Map

Once again, the Xian rhetoric that is constantly flowing out of our current theocratic administration has caused the United States harm:

For Iraqis, Religion Trumps Nationality

Snippets:

“We refer to them as Iraqi and ourselves as American, using national designators,” Miles said. They refer to themselves as Mujahidin, and us as Crusaders and Jews using religious designations.”

“Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin [that fucking guy again!] attracted a storm of criticism for preaching sermons in Christian churches while wearing his uniform, and saying things like, ‘America is a Christian nation with a calling under the hand of God,” Miles said…

… This assertion does not sit well with many Islamic countries, all of which are watching the United States with trepidation. Miles said that in the past, Muslims likely felt besieged by increasingly secularized countries in Asia, Europe and America. This feeling is not alleviated when Iraq is invaded by American troops led by “an American president [who] takes well-publicized counsel from Christian leaders as he aggressively promotes America’s international agenda.” Consequently, an increasing number of individuals feel that America is fighting against Islam, not Iraq.

You know what, Bush and the rest of your psycho Xians? It is becoming increasingly obvious that you are no less rabid and closed-minded than your extremist Islamic counterparts. I say again: I am sick of living in a world trapped between your two outlandishly hateful and xenophobic belief systems. Thanks to both sides for ceaselessly fanning the flames of religious hatred among the simple-minded masses. Keep it up, boys. You may yet bring about disaster for us all.

Allah be praised. Thank you, Jesus. Amen and pass the ammunition.

We’ve been asked this so many times on this site, it’s as if the xians who asked were looking for some Freudian or psychological explanation for why we don’t believe: “Yes, yes! It’s all clear! I was beaten by my father, and in my rebelling against him, I ended up rebelling against all authority, which included God! It all makes sense now!” Ugh.

As usual, I can’t speak for others. But you wanna know why I’m fucking pissed off? Check this shit out:

Zealotry puts Iran on apocalyptic path:

According to the transcript, Ahmadinejad said a member of his entourage at the UN meeting first told him of the light. “When you began with the words ‘In the name of God’, I saw a light coming, surrounding you and protecting you to the end (of the speech),” the member said.

Ahmadinejad confirmed sensing a similar presence. “I felt it myself, too, that suddenly the atmosphere changed and for 27-28 minutes the leaders could not blink … They had their eyes and ears open for the message from the Islamic Republic,” he told Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli.

Ahmadinejad’s “vision” at the UN could be dismissed as political posturing if it weren’t for a string of similar statements and actions that suggest he believes he is destined to bring about the “End Times” — the end of the world — by paving the way for the return of the Shia Muslim messiah.

Nice. Just great.

Now I have to worry about my kid making it to kindergarten, all because some fuck-up had a brainfart.

Clearly, the scope of these attitudes doesn’t limit itself to Iranian leaders. As was already posted, it easily infects so many other (basic) aspects of life. And there are some people who are very proud of how their faith plays an intricate role in their lives, which is fine. But we have to live next door to you, and put up with your bullshit.

So, when you get the urge to ask us why we’re “so angry,” try shutting the fuck up and looking around. Once you actually break out of your solipsistic world, you’ll see (1) that there are other people in the world, and (2) that your beliefs actually do affect these other people.