(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)

Funny thing happened to me yesterday. Two days ago night I downloaded two episodes of the Point of Inquiry podcast, including a recent interview with Paul Kurtz. I listened to it as I walked between classes. A lot of it is focused on the idea of promoting positive humanistic values over merely attacking religion, which seems to me perfectly reasonable, as long as it isn’t coupled with the absurd accusation that today’s celebrity religion critics haven’t done this at all (if you think this, you really need to re-read their books more carefully, or perhaps read them a first time).

Almost immediately after finishing listening to the podcast, in between classes, I sat down to check my Bloglines and found a post by “framing” king Matthew Nisbet, commenting on the podcast and claiming Kurtz as one of his own–i.e., as the anti-Richard Dawkins. Without admitting the validity of naked appeals to authority, I must say this would be something of a coup for Nisbet. As the founder of a bundle of important skeptical organizations, including Promethus Books and the Council for the Scientific Organization of Claims of the Paranormal, Kurtz has arguably done more for skepticism of religion in the late 20th century than anyone else, living or dead. Nisbet’s presentation struck me as a little misleading, though, given that he conveniently ignores the fact that Kurtz explicitly affirmed Dawkins’ view that religion is a delusion. Worse, when I read the comments, I discovered Nisbet told at least one truly indefensible lie:

Moreover, like Shermer, Wilson, and Kurtz, I strongly believe that when Dawkins et al. attack moderately religious Americans it alienates our natural allies and is a major self-inflicted wound.

Kurtz has never said, and probably never will say, that the work of these religion critics is “a major self-inflicted wound.” The truth is that Kurtz has dismissed the notion that they are “too outspoken”.

I have this to say to Nisbet: grow a spine you miserable worm. If you’re going to say the things you’ve said about Dawkins, have the courage to be consistent and take the next logical step of denouncing Paul Kurtz and everything he works for. Indeed, you should be denouncing Kurtz even more strongly than you denounce Dawkins. Dawkins may have put out one book dedicated to attacking religion, but most of his public work has been about explaining science to the general public, but Kurtz’s number one goal has always been the promotion of a philosophy that explicitly rejects God, and he founded a publishing house for this purpose which has published more anti-religious books than Dawkins will ever write. This should be more than enough for you, since you aren’t just picking a bone with Dawkins use of the word “delusion” (which Kurtz agrees with in any case) but have also insisted “The public cannot be expected to differentiate between his [Dawkins] advocacy of evolution and his atheism.” Why aren’t you saying the same thing about Kurtz? Your hypocrisy disgusts me.

Tags: Matthew Nisbet, Paul Kurtz

Naomi has commented on this before, but I just wanted to post a follow-up…

Misconduct by Pentagon Generals Participating in “Christian Embassy”

“This U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General’s (DoD/IG) report confirms the intentional dismantling of the Constitutionally mandated wall separating church and state by some of the highest ranking officials in the Bush Administration and the U.S. military. Embarrassingly feeble excuses proffered by senior U.S. Army and Air Force generals and other senior officers reveal long and deep collusion with a fundamentalist, religious missionary organization, the ‘Christian Embassy’. That these senior Pentagon officials control the world’s largest nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal should eviscerate the American public’s trust and confidence in their military and civilian leadership. The shocking allowance of unrestricted Pentagon access to fundamentalist Christian missionaries through the official ‘badging’ process is an outrageous national security breach of the highest order. Therefore, MRFF now demands immediate Congressional oversight hearings on this breach. Inexplicably, the DoD/IG failed to fault Secretary of the Army (and former Acting Secretary of the Air Force) Preston M.(‘Pete’) Geren, even though his role in the ‘Christian Embassy’ video clearly led the way for other senior officers’ participation. MRFF intends to file expeditiously a comprehensive Federal lawsuit that will rapaciously pursue legal remedies to the multitude of horrific Constitutional violations this DoD/IG report reveals.”

If you’re interested, the pic on the right will lead you directly to the CNN coverage…

Newsblurb at MSNBC.com

Injunction sought against Him for allegedly causing deaths, making threats

LINCOLN, Neb. – The defendant in a state senator’s lawsuit is accused of causing untold death and horror and threatening to cause more still. He can be sued in Douglas County, the legislator claims, because He’s everywhere. [my emphasis]

State Sen. Ernie Chambers sued God last week. Angered by another lawsuit he considers frivolous, Chambers says he’s trying to make the point that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terrorist threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

*snip*

The Omaha senator, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, also says God has caused “fearsome floods … horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes.”

He’s seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

More news from DHS, a.k.a. KGB…

The Nightmare of DHS´s *Secure Flight*

Beginning in February 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will implement their ¨Advance Passenger Information System (APIS),¨ the gist of which is that you will need permission from the United States Government to travel on any air or sea vessel that goes to, from or through the U.S. The travel companies will not be able to issue a boarding pass until you are cleared by DHS. This applies to ALL passengers, US citizens and visitors alike. And how do you get said permission to travel? That´s for your government to know and you to never find out. Now TSA proposes to do for domestic travel what APIS will do for international routes. That´s what I said: the new TSA rule would require that you obtain PERMISSION to travel within the U.S. [...] Think about that: you will not be allowed to verify if the person demanding your papers is actually authorized to do so. In addition, the airlines or their contractors (or sub or even sub sub contractors) have the right, under the proposed rules, to do anything they like with your personal information including: “keep copies of your passport … as long as they like, use it, publish it, broadcast it, sell it, rent it, or pass it on to whomever they please…. [T]hey would have no obligation to get your permission for any of this.”

Finally coming back to the world of the living and feeling good enough to post and have caught up with all the reading I’ve missed here in the blogosphere.

I promised you some stories from my two-week-long incarceration in a lunatic asylum (catholic hospital). The physical pain and illness I was feeling was nothing in comparison to having to hear the various roommates of mine that came and went having communion every fucking day and cry in their beds for hours afterwards. The god representatives and religious visits did absolutely no good for them at all, and actually made them WORSE. One woman who happily chatted on the phone with a friend despite her cellulitis in her leg stopped to take communion from a priest and he was so somber and sad. Droned out the mumbo-jumbo incantations to the great sky daddy, the sad and sorrowful prayer for the sick and by the time it was over she had to tell her friend she was in dire pain, had to go and was calling for morphine and for the nurse to come comfort her. She even went so far as to request a catherter because her leg was too painful to get out of bed, though she was getting up to reach her snack crackers minutes before the priest arrived. The god incantations seemed to do much more harm than good.

I lay there in pain while Drs. Larry, Moe, Curly, Shemp, and Joe tried to figure out where to start with me since I had a variety of problems. Pulmonary edema, irregular heartbeat, biliary dyskenesia of the gallbladder, ulcers. I needed surgery, but they needed to get other things figured out so they would not be responsible for killing me on the operating table. But like I said, those problems were just a puzzle that doctors needed to use science and their education to figure out and fix. The real suffering was caused by the god-botherers who swooped in for the kill the minute I was admitted to the hospital.

I had told them in the ER when I was admitted that I HAD NO GOD BELIEFS and to leave me be about it. No sooner I was in my room, before seeing a nurse or a doctor, a chaplain came waltzing in asking about my “spirituality”. I said I was an atheist, I had no god beliefs and she said she would leave some tracts by my bedside and I said “NO THANK YOU, TAKE THEM AWAY”. I explained I did not believe in god and didn’t want to be bothered with it. Does she respect that and respect that I am in great pain and sick? Of course not. [ed note: she proceeded to curse god's blessings on me before leaving...I forgot to add that before] The selfish need to validate their own sky daddy beliefs takes priority over patient wellness and stress levels.

Most of my roommates didn’t stay more than a couple of days and didn’t have anything too serious, except for one woman who had open-heart surgery a few months before and was having a bit of complications. She took communion and became like a baby afterwards, letting herself be cooed and coddled, refusing to even sit up though she had been sitting up earlier that morning. The two who were not religious struggled through their problems, went for their tests, were optimistic about getting out ASAP and were very active in finding out what was making them ill so they could fix it and get home. I was trying to do the same thing, as was my husband since I had a similar problem in 1987 and he was trying to round up medical records from ancient archives, and I was trying to get doctors to listen to me…all productive things that oogie boogie prayers would be no use for.

I had an aunt who never, ever calls me at any other time except when I have been in the hospital called me once again to tell me “god is with me”. I told her if that was true to tell the sick, sadistic bastard to BACK OFF! She was stunned for a minute ,then started to talk about god bringing us trials and not giving us more than we can handle and blah, blah, blah and how god helped her though all of her strokes and her friends dying etc. and I told her it seems like god did nothing but torture people. I told her I could not believe in her god. I believe in human will and resilience. I am like Tigger, I bounce back. I don’t need god beliefs and to fuck off with the god stuff. I was in so much pain I just said things as I felt like it. I didn’t really care if I offended anyone who was trying to take advantage of my vulnerable situation to zoom in for the “kill” with the god shit.

I couldn’t understand why my own sister, who means well, but thought we had an agreement not to bring up religion left a text message on my phone the day of surgery, “I am at work praying 4 u”. My husband had my phone so I didn’t see it till a couple days later. But he sent a message back to her after surgery that said “surgery done, she’s in recovery. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was with her”. She asked me about that the next day, “what’s the flying spaghetti monster?” in a tone that was kind of defensive. I told her to look it up on the internet. Praying for me one minute and wanting to get into a sky daddy argument the next? I KNOW she has seen about the FSM because I have it linked on my blog that she can’t resist staying away from.

I am usually a very nice person, and try not to be mean to people, however, the pain and the added god botherer aggravation turned me into a very militant atheist. I was taken down for a test one day and left on a gurney to wait in a holding area. There was an older woman there waiting for her husband to have a test done. She said to me “so what’s your problem?” I said, “I don’t feel like talking.” She said, “did you have surgery?” I told her “I don’t talk to strangers about my business, please leave me alone.” She said, “My husband had a blah, blah blah, and I had a stroke back in January, and I have arthritis and blah, blah, blah, waa, waa, waa….” I interrupted and told her that I was sorry to hear that but I really didn’t want to hear it. She then got close to me and said “trust in the Lord, he is there for you” and I said “I AM AN ATHEIST, THERE IS NO GOD” and she backed up as if I had spit fire at her. LOL! It was great.

There was an incident even worse than the frustrating god representatives and godly roommates. I had been in the hospital in the cardiac ward for about four days and just got a big drowsy with the pain meds and was all hooked up to monitors and I.V lines and all of a sudden a shriek came from another room “ALLAH AKBAR! durkadurkadurkaalalalalalalala and a bunch of chanting in what sounded like Arabic. I was so startled, and disoriented. It continued. “ALLAH AKBAR!! ALLAH AKBAR! durkadurkadurkaalalalalalalall” Then a bunch of people were chanting and yelling and sounded like there were about 40 people in one room. I started scanning my room for someplace to hide. I was delirious with pain med and pain itself so everything was quite surreal. Turns out what happened was that an old muslim man had died and I guess it is normal tradition to bellow to their sky daddy like Klingons when a loved one dies. Holy fuck, that sounded like they were screaming out war cries of the start of some kind of violence! It would not be allowed if it were not for “religious tolerance”.

I should have done this sooner, but I looked up the “Mission Statement” of that hospital and of several hospitals in our area and all are affiliated with some kind of mythology cult. The hospital I was at is affiliated with the catholic church and according to the ethics and religious doctrine of the catholic church. Then there are Lutheran run hospitals, Baptist and Methodist. I have found that the only few places I can go where people are treated medically first and where individuality is considered and respected are the secular university hospitals. I am now in the process of finding new doctors and specialists at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Northwestern is another good one, but too far away. As atheists, I suggest that before an illness strikes, check out the hospitals in your area and find one that you can be comfortable in because when it’s really religious it causes more stress, uncomfortableness and frustration.

It’s sad that these delusional patients who were my roommates could not see that talking with their friends made them feel better. Watching television made them feel better and took their minds off their problems. My family who visited cheered me. Watching a sitcom did far more for me than communion did for the god believers. Religion made them SICKER and more full of self-pity. But it seems like many of them like and even thrive on that masochistic part of xianity.

Bob Costas about a football player, who was thought to have been paralyzed by an on-field collision, having an apparent recovery:

Two days later, Everett began to move his arms and legs. The seemingly miraculous turnaround was actually the result of cutting-edge science.

Wanna maybe rethink writing a check to Benny Hinn, and send it to someone who might actually cure people?

I’m going to kill two birds with one stone on this one.

One of the major claims in Islam, is how eerily it corresponds with modern science as we know it today.

This site makes a number of extravagant claims, which would appear to the untrained eye to be ‘miracles’, but which come apart under a small amount of investigation.

First up:

Roundness of the earth

He has created the Heavens and the Earth for Truth. He wraps the night up in the day, and wraps the day up in the night. (Qur’an, 39:5)

In the Qur’an, the words used for describing the universe are quite remarkable. The Arabic word which is translated as “to wrap” in the above verse is “takwir.” In English, it means “to make one thing lap over another, folded up as a garment that is laid away.” For instance, in Arabic dictionaries this word is used for the action of wrapping one thing around another, in the way that a turban is put on. The information given in the verse about the day and the night wrapping each other up includes accurate information about the shape of the world. This can be true only if the Earth is round. This means that in the Qur’an, which was revealed in the 7th century, the roundness of the world was hinted at.

However, it should be remembered that the understanding of astronomy of the time perceived the world differently. It was then thought that the world was a flat plane and all scientific calculations and explanations were based on this belief. However, the Glorious Qur’an has employed the most definitive words when it came to describing the universe. These facts, which we could only correctly fathom in our century, have been in the Qur’an for a vast length of time.

And then,

The seven firmaments

It is He Who created everything on the earth for you and then directed His attention up to heaven and arranged it into seven regular heavens. He has knowledge of all things. (Qur’an, 2:29)

Then He turned to heaven when it was smoke. In two days He determined them as seven heavens and revealed, in every heaven, its own mandate. (Qur’an, 41:11-12)

Deflated, two minutes flat.

The Wiki entry not only says this about a spherical earth,

“The concept of a spherical Earth was espoused by Pythagoras apparently on aesthetic grounds, as he also held all other celestial bodies to be spherical. It replaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth: In early Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean, and this forms the premise for early Greek maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus.”

But also puts the lie to the ‘original’ claim of the ’seven firmaments’, thusly:

“Other speculations as to the shape of Earth include a seven-layered ziggurat or cosmic mountain, alluded to in the Avesta and ancient Persian writings (see seven climes). In fact, the Earth is reasonably well-approximated by an oblate spheroid.”

(The Avesta, for those of you interested, are the sacred texts of Zoroaster, and has been dated linguistically at about 1000 BCE, but the written format is dated Second CE).

And, for the icing on the cake,

“Yajnavalkya

Yajnavalkya (c. 9th–8th century BCE) recognized that the Earth is spherical in his astronomical text Shatapatha Brahmana. This is also recognized in another Vedic Sanskrit text Aitareya Brahmana composed around the same time, and in a later Sanskrit commentary Vishnu Purana.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras (b. 570 BCE) found harmony in the universe and sought to explain it. He reasoned that Earth and the other planets must be spheres, since the most harmonious geometric form was a circle.

Plato

Plato (427 BCE – 347 BCE) travelled to southern Italy to study Pythagorean mathematics. When he returned to Athens and established his school, Plato also taught his students that Earth was a sphere. If man could soar high above the clouds, Earth would resemble “a ball made of twelve pieces of leather, variegated, a patchwork of colours.”

Aristotle

Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) was Plato’s prize student and “the mind of the school.” Aristotle observed “there are stars seen in Egypt and [...] Cyprus which are not seen in the northerly regions.” Since this could only happen on a curved surface, he too believed Earth was a sphere “of no great size, for otherwise the effect of so slight a change of place would not be quickly apparent.” (De caelo, 298a2-10)

Aristotle provided physical and observational arguments supporting the idea of a spherical Earth:

• Every portion of the earth tends toward the center until by compression and convergence they form a sphere. (De caelo, 297a9-21)
• Travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon; and
• The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round.(De caelo, 297b31-298a10)

The concepts of symmetry, equilibrium and cyclic repetition permeated Aristotle’s work. In his Meteorology he divided the world into five climatic zones: Two temperate areas were separated by a torrid zone near the equator, as well as two cold inhospitable regions, “one near our upper or northern pole and the other near the … southern pole,” both impenetrable and girdled with ice (Meteorologica, 362a31-35). Although no humans could survive in the frigid zones, inhabitants in the southern temperate regions could exist.

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes (276 BCE – 194 BCE) estimated Earth’s circumference around 240 BCE. He had heard about a place in Egypt where the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice and used geometry to come up with a circumference of 250,000 stades. This estimate astonishes some modern writers, as it is within 2% of the modern value of the equatorial circumference, 40,075 kilometres. However, the length of a ’stade’ is not precisely known; Eratosthenes’ figure falls short if we do not use a fairly generous estimate for this length.

Earliest known reference to a spherical earth – 17 centuries pre-Koran. Earliest known reference to seven ‘firmaments’ (read: atmospheric layers) – 5 centuries prior.

For your entertainment, here is a fairly stupid video making proclamations of all sorts of easily explainable ‘miracles’. The crow was obviously taught the word, the lion had indigestion, clouds constantly form ‘allah’s’ signature, and the video also has a known falsified picture of an alleged ‘Nephelim’.

Till the next post, then.

In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal

New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses, anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general, more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith. [...] Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to Sanderson and others. “There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see as rising Islamic and Christian militancy,” Sanderson said. Though the number of nonbelievers speaking their minds is rising, academics say it’s impossible to calculate how many people silently share that view. [...] Associations of nonbelievers are also moving to address the growing demand in Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries for nonreligious weddings, funerals and celebrations for new babies. They are helping arrange ceremonies that steer clear of talk of God, heaven and miracles and celebrate, as they say, “this one life we know.” [...] Now, she added, humanist and secularist groups are becoming “more confident and more powerful” and recognize that they represent the wishes of huge numbers of people. [...] The expansion of the Internet has made it a vital way for nonbelievers to connect. In retirement centers, restaurants, homes and public lectures and debates, nonbelievers are convening to talk about how to push back what they see as increasingly intrusive religion. “Born Again Atheist,” “Happy Heathen” and other anti-religious T-shirts and bumper stickers are increasingly seen on the streets. Groups such as the Skeptics in the Pub in London, which recently met to discuss this topic, “God: The Failed Hypothesis,” are now finding that they need bigger rooms to accommodate those who find them online. [...] Not believing in an afterlife, he said, “makes you think you have to make the most of this life. It’s the now that matters. It also makes you feel a greater urgency of things that matter,” such as halting global warming, and not just dismissing it as being “all in God’s plan.”

Howdy-Howdy, Folks. It’s nice to know we can reach such a large audience.

So, like, where are all of you atheist-freaks from, anyway?…