Dr. Jim, Facebook free for almost a week.

Dr. Jim got depressed for some stupid reason the week of the Religious Studies conference, and ditched Facebook. Now, without Facebook, I feel strangely normal, and that is very disconcerting. Should I go back?

Hmmm.

I do miss getting poked. But I’m not sure I miss the pseudo-social life of sitting around staring at it. Not that I have much of a social life anyway. Now I’m depressed again.

Flying Spaghetti Monster: He who has EXPELLED Evolution!

Thanks to Ian of the University of Alberta, Atheists and Agnostics club and Terahertz fame, up in Edmonton Alberta, we have this trailer about a VERY SERIOUS documentary on the biases against research into the natural world based on Pastafarian ideas. As much as the new film “Expelled” with that dipwit Ben Stein tries to show how intelligent design is callously “expelled” from scientific research and intelligent design advocates are ostracized, Ian and Co. from Edmonton are advertising a movie that does the same for His Noodly Appendageness. They have produced a 7 minute trailer. Watch it and be convinced.

I think they should have contacted some of my buddies in the Religious Studies program there, because they, like us down here in Lethbridge, don’t have courses on Pastafarianism.

I should admit, however, that our dept was the subject of a VERY SERIOUS complaint in U of L.’s “3 Lines Free” section of the student newspaper. It was taken under (slight) consideration HERE. However, now that Dr. Jim has a WHOLE FREAKING YEAR OF STUDY LEAVE coming up, perhaps I could research the “Self-Actualization in the (Meta)phorical inverted id-ego Syntax of First Person Pro/pre/post-nouns in the Transcendental Poetic structures of Noodley Appendedness.”

Carnival of the Godless

The recent edition is up at Axis of Jared, and SHUFFL’s recent post on “anoint” in the annoying jargon series is included. Check out all the great posts A of J has mentioned. My favourite is the debate going on at Bay of Fundie with the creationist folk at the Access Research Network.

War on Christmas?

Ahh, the Grinch Brigade, battling biblical mythology with their unholy, atheistic War on Christmas. I suppose most folk would think I belong to it, being an atheist and all, but I really do want to stand off a way from that sort of position. First of all, I think the whole “War on Christmas” thing is just so overblown I find little substantial difference between the hyped up self-righteous indignation of the Christian warriors from the hyped up self-righteousness of their bitter foes, the Ban-All-Public-Reference-to-Christmas-Crowd.

The way I see it, this “war” is a product of the over rampant commercialism that tells us that Christmas is a time in which all of our dreams must come true, be it for toys or assorted other material acquisitions, a deeply meaningful religious experience, or a utopia free from theologies or philosophies we find unacceptable. What ever it might mean to different people, Christmas is a social phenomenon that has become as much a time for excessive consumption and production of ideological and political discourse as it is for the exchange of material goods.

The Christ child is marketed as symbol of purity and innocence, ideals that cross the boundary between religious and secular ways of thinking. He is the destined “king”–and even non-religious folks sometimes fall victim to the vestiges of a romanticized version of the ‘divine right of kings’. Witness the huge appeal the Lord of the Rings saga has to many secularists despite its emotionally charged “messianic” portrayals of the “return of the king”. We are assaulted on all sides by encouragements to be of good cheer, to be comforted, etc, while we are bombarded with the idea that some higher destiny is playing itself out behind the scenes of an orgy of consumption. But purity, hope, and innocence, so intrinsic to the iconography and emotions of the season, runs up against a dirty old world of rushing around, spending money we don’t have, meeting relatives we may not like, hearing the same damn songs over and over, spending more money, and hearing bad news of ‘wars and rumors of wars’, heartbreak, tragedies, loneliness, and so forth. The emotions we are supposed to have get derailed by the rush to find a calm space in which experience those positive feelings.

A frequent human reaction to the dissonance of having realilty contradict our expectations is to find someone to blame. For those who are active in a “culture war”, “to restore the Christian values of our country” or to “struggle against ignorance” have ready made enemies. Hence, the “War on Christmas” or the “war to restore Christmas”. The ideals of a baby’s purity and the hope of new life this symbolizes are transformed into mad quest for ideological purity—either religious or secular. I think we are all victims of it.

Personally, I’m bored stiff with the whole damn thing. The Christmas holiday is as much a part of our secular culture as is the non-religious summer break from school kids get. It is just the way it is. I don’t mind people wishing me a “Merry Christmas”. For me it is a largely secular event, anyway. If a Christian should wish me well because she or he sees it as a religious obligation to make the world a better place, how can I take offence? If a politician says it, so what? My main point is that “Christmas” is not longer an exclusively Christian phenomenon. It has outgrown its original context. The church cannot hope to reign it it or dictate to non-members how to practice it, nor should secular governments attempt to rid the season of all references to its original meaning within church practices. On the other side of the coin, I can’t stand the rhetorical indignation of people who vow to boycott stores whose staff say “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings”, taking these greetings as a personal affront or an attempt to suppress their rights to worship as they see fit. There has to be some sort of balance and moderation here.

But no, we want ideological purity for Christmas, and damn it, we have a right to expect that everyone else give it to us. If we don’t get it, it is because SOMEONE ELSE has been naughty, and we have to denounce them in the name of comfort, joy, goodwill to all, and the light of rationality. It is enough to drive me mad. Imagine trying to entirely “de-Christianize” our Western culture or, on the other hand, restoring everything to its original “Christian” contexts. It would be impossible to do either. How many towns, cities, roads, schools and people are named after places and people mentioned in the bible? Should St. Paul, Alberta and St. Paul, Minnesota be renamed? The flip side of the coin is how to get everybody in St. Petersburg to venerate St. Peter; hell, that is what the city is supposed to be all about, isn’t it? We cannot avoid our Christian heritage and many aspects of it are nothing to be ashamed of.

Many vestiges of the past remain. Some Christians criticize Christmas because it has some times with Pagan solstice rites and symbols. Some non-Christians denigrate the holiday for those same reasons. But really, folks, no culture can be fully free of its own past. Greeks do not need to rename Athens, even though the city is named for a pagan deity they no longer worship. Likewise, secularists need not fear recognizing Christmas as an original Christian festival. It has grown beyond those roots and is a part of us. Politicizing the holiday debates to the extent that it has been in recent years is to no one’s benefit. Sure, disagreement exists, but the quest for ‘purity’ and perfection in the world can lead to nothing but grief for all concerned.

So, have a very merry secular Christmas. Deal with it.*

*I recommend dealing with it by setting aside at least 2 or 3 days of taking it easy, sipping hot chocolate and thinking of all the people you know who make this world a decent place to live despite of its many imperfections.

Cectic, the user manual for your brain.

Or at least according to the artist,  Rudis Muiznieks, who is a U. of Calgary computer science graduate.

Visit his site at http://cectic.com/

Morals from Mailorder?

Watch this, it is great!

A great discussion on morality and miracles by Pat Condell.

Thanks to tomroberts at the Heathen Hangout who posted it there.

Misquoted, Misinterpreted, or Misattributed?

Greta Christina takes on the “Liar, Looney, or Lord” trilemma with her typical logic, grace, and humour. Oh, yeah. She takes it on and kicks its ass.

But in a weird way, I think the rhetorical weakness of the “Liar, Loony or Lord” argument is also its unintended strength. Because for all its logical shoddiness and cheap emotional manipulation, it forces non-believers to piss or get off the pot. It forces people who were waffling to be outspoken. It forces people who were being vague to be clear. It forces us to say, “Yes, I think your God was not God. And if your God thought he was God, then he was wrong. He was crazy, or he was a liar, or he was misquoted and never actually said that he was God, or he never really existed. You want me to say that — fine. I’ll say it.”

Published! Pro-creationist inanity answered!

The Lethbridge Herald today published my letter today (Oct. 10) regarding the teaching of creationism in science classes. They have not posted it on their website, however, so I’m posting it here. They also published two other letters, one from Dan Johnson and another from Ron Yashida. They took up almost half a page.

Here is what I had to say:

Dear Editor,
Re: “Let the Election Debates Begin” Herald, Tuesday Oct. 2
I was not so much shocked but dismayed and a little angered that at least two candidates for the public school board have expressed a willingness to include creationism or its pseudo-scientific alter-ego, “intelligent design”, in the science curriculum. The judge in the widely politicized trial in Dover Pennsylvania that ended in late 2005 called the Dover school board’s new policy on teaching creationism “breathtaking inanity”. The same could be said of any similar policy here in Lethbridge.

Kirbey Lockhart claims that evolution is a theory and seems to regard theories as simply debatable opinions or conjectures. The theory of evolution enjoys a great consensus among scientists in the relevant biological disciplines because of the huge amount of data that support the theory; data amassed over many decades of research by thousands of trained specialists. As quoted in the article, Brian Carlson seems to support the old red-herring of “teaching the controversy”. There is no real controversy among scientists, the theory of evolution is not so easily dismissed or challenged. Lockhart and Carlson are attempting to teach their church’s doctrine through subterfuge. Why should our schools consider the scope of science to include the Bible’s multiple and contradictory references to creation (presuming Lockhart and Carlson intend on teaching all of them, and not just their favorite)?

Mr. Carlson says that if the school board values building decision making skills in students they should allow his son to make his own decisions regarding creationism. Doubtlessly, Mr. Carlson would then agree to include the findings of secular critical scholarship on the Bible in school curricula so students can decide for themselves on the origins of that rather inconsistent collection of writings.

I am upset enough that my education tax dollars must be allocated to support either the Catholic schools or a public school board which also includes a Christian institution. To have more class time (and hence tax dollars) allocated to teach one of fundamentalist Christianity’s appropriations of iron-age mythology in science classes would be an outrage. Let the churches see to their own business on their own premises by spending their own money.

Let me, however, make another suggestion to the school board candidates. Schools should teach courses about the different religions in the world. This should not be done in a way to make converts of anyone or to “prove” one or another “right” or to challenge science. It should be done to build awareness of the history, core beliefs, rituals and practices of these faiths—all on equal terms. This would be a practical use of school resources as it would make so much more of the world and its diversity understandable to students.
James Linville

Schools should put faith in science

A letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald, written by Scott Rowed:

When people believe that Adam and Eve had a pet vegetarian Tyrannosaurus rex who used his massive, serrated teeth to crack open watermelons, should we respect their beliefs? (Don’t laugh; this is roughly what some creationist cults actually believe).

Should we reward them with taxpayers’ money to pass on these wonderful insights to the next generation? Should our future leaders learn to smother their critical thinking and make decisions based on faith rather than evidence and reason? From Canada, we don’t have to look too far south to see how tragic these faith-based decisions can be.

Read the rest here.

Rowed is referring to PC leader John Tory’s recent comments on integrating creationism into public school curricula.

Dodos, A Whole Flippin’ Flock of ‘em!

Two rather “creative” and related events are taking place on Nov. 1 here on campus.
Starring:

RANDY OLSON, an Independent Filmmaker.

First off is his Public Lecture, “DON’T BE SUCH A SCIENTIST: TALKING SUBSTANCE IN AN AGE OF STYLE
1pm, AH100 on the U of L campus. Admission is free.
Free Admission
Later that same day: A screening of Olson’s film,
FLOCK OF DODOS: THE EVOLUTION – INTELLIGENT DESIGN CIRCUS
which will be followed by a discussion with the director.
7pm, PE250 on the U of L campus
Free Admission

The U of L notice board posted these related links.
New York Times article
http://shiftingbaselines.org/index.php
http://www.flockofdodos.com/

I fully intend on going to see the fun.
For some Alberta dodos, see the links on the right to Creationist Museums!