Religious Right Watch

Blog For Darwin: Popular Science ends reader comments; says practice is bad for science - Yahoo News

In a surprising move, the website for Popular Science announced they are no longer allowing reader comments on their articles. And in a potentially even more controversial move, the site’s online content director boldly explains the decision was reached because of their belief that reader’s comments are actually bad for science.

“A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics,” writes Suzanne LaBarre. “Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to ‘debate’ on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.”

via news.yahoo.com

via www.blogfordarwin.com

Defending Science Education in TX #StandUp4Science with Texas Freedom Network (TFN)

Texas Conservatives Demand Science Textbooks Incorporate 'Creation Science Based On Biblical Principles'.... Brian Tashmanof PFAW's project Right Wing Watch reports that: 

Creationists advising the Texas Education Agency, the state’s board of education, are no longer even trying to hide the fact that they want to insert pseudo-scientific material grounded in religious beliefs into public school science textbooks. Terrence Stutz of the Dallas Morning News reports that evolution detractors appointed to the review boards are urging the textbook publishers to ignore the Supreme Court (along with science) and push Creationism, or be rejected.

See also The Dallas Morning News article, "Religious conservatives on Texas textbook review panels criticize proposed science books".

A response to this religious-right ploy comes from the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) and its Stand Up for Science Education campaign (the hashtag is #standup4science). TFN explains:

Stand Up for Science is an ongoing TFN campaign uniting parents, educators, scientists and businesspeople in support of sound science education and responsible medical research in Texas. This multi-issue campaign focuses primarily on the issue of teaching evolution and climate change in public school science classes and defending stem cell research in Texas.

You can join our campaign by signing our Stand Up for Science petition. TFN will send e-mail updates to help you know when and how to take action on crucial public policy decisions involving science.

The TFN is live-blogging the hearing; the NCSE is live-tweeting #StandUp4Science also -- check it out.

(Image from TFN's #StandUp4Science Tumblr page.)

Creationism 3.0: Meet Intelligent Design’s Huckster | Science | Religion Dispatches

There's a temptation to review each new book that makes the case for intelligent design by publishing a laundry list of every fact, experiment, subtheory, and interpretation that the author gets wrong. I'll spare you that exercise, partly because it's been done elsewhere, by scientists, and partly because Stephen Meyer, the author of Darwin's Doubt, is not your typical creationist hack. 

Instead, Meyer, who holds a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge, is that odd hybrid: the philosopher-huckster. His arguments are, for the most part, precise, his research is extensive, and many of his points echo those made by leading biologists. Like many other proponents of intelligent design, he's not committed to defending the details of Genesis. He accepts that the world is old, and that evolution does happen—at least in a limited way. As a result, he not only sounds like a scientist, but for much of the book he almost acts like one. 

All of which is to say that a laundry list of errors doesn't get to the meat of Darwin's Doubt. Meyer is the finest kind of huckster: he doesn't tell lies, he merely rearranges truths. Darwin's Doubt is a toxic blend of hasty conclusions, cracked arguments, and terminological confusions. It's also, for those who are keeping count, a New York Times bestseller. More plausible than the arguments of 6,000-year-old-earthers, and much slicker than the earlier, bumbling efforts of intelligent design-ers, creationism 3.0 has arrived. 

via www.religiondispatches.org

It's remarkable that William Paley's "watchmaker" argument, formulated before Darwin published Origin of Species and which concludes that natural processes suggest there's a designer behind them, endures so strongly. The fact is that a designer is not required to explain the origin of species.  As zoologist Richard Dawkins noted, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design...." The universe has its elegant qualities but also its messy ones. There is much about the universe that is harsh, parasitic, inelegant, wasteful, and cruel according to human perception.

Sure, an intelligent designer is one way to explain some of the evidence we see in the fossil record. You can make that case. It just won't be science. Science, after all, isn't a random game of accumulating evidence. It's a very particular method for organizing specific kinds of observations. And when it comes to history, science relies on patterns of cause and effect staying constant across time and space—and not the sudden interpolation of otherwise scientifically unobservable beings. To say otherwise is to ask science to be something it's not. At this point, Meyer could acknowledge that he has strayed beyond the boundaries of the field. Instead, he tries to stretch those boundaries in order to meet what must be, one can only conclude, personal or political needs.

5 Sneaky Ways Fundamentalists Are Trying To Slip Christian Creationism Into America’s Public Schools | Alternet

some public schools in America do all they can to avoid teaching evolution. Thanks to constant pressure from the Religious Right, many public schools are battlegrounds in a culture war that does great damage to our nation’s scientific credibility as creationists work overtime to slip their ideas into the curriculum.

via www.alternet.org

Joseph A. Palermo: The Culture Wars Are Alive and Kickin' (A Disaster for Women and the Environment)

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry, the Religious Right, and their Republican allies, following Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis's courageous filibuster last week, are literally working overtime to criminalize women's reproductive rights. Commentators correctly point out that a state that purports to be so "pro-life" it must kneecap women also happens to be the repository of the most efficient and voluminous state-sanctioned killing machine. There have been 500 executions (and counting) in the Lone Star State since 1982.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Reactions to Exodus Closure: Pro, Con, and Other | Advocate.com

This week’s announcement that the “ex-gay” group Exodus International would shut down and reemerge as a different type of organization is drawing not only denunciation from the religious right and praise from LGBT rights advocates, but admission from some conservative Christians that efforts to change sexual orientation are ineffective.

Not that the latter group is endorsing same-sex relationships. “I do appreciate that Exodus no longer promotes orientation change. Although God does not bless homosexual sex or same-sex romantic relations, heterosexuality should not be the goal,” said author Christopher Yuan, according to Christianity Today. “One weakness of Exodus (whether intentional or unintentional) had been a lack of emphasis upon biblical singleness, resulting in an overemphasis upon heterosexual marriage.” Yuan’s book Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God urges celibacy for anyone not in a heterosexual marriage.

via www.advocate.com

Swanson: Star Trek Promotes Bestiality, Children's Show Superhero 'Probably Fighting Christians' | Right Wing Watch

On Generations Radio this week, Kevin Swanson discussed the parenting conundrum of censoring children’s entertainment. The pastor and right-wing radio broadcaster began by criticizing Star Trek Into Darkness for a scene in which Captain Kirk wakes up next to “not just one, but two” females of the “wrong” species.

Swanson condemned the movie for endorsing bestiality. He blamed evolution for the blockbuster’s vice, as “evolution has no basic problem with bestiality or cross-species mating.”

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S.: study | The Raw Story

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

via www.rawstory.com

7 Experts Who Want to Reframe the Boston Bombing Media Coverage

Chip Berlet of Talk To Action delves intelligently into the media coverage of the Boston bombing case:

Much media coverage of the worldview and motivation of the suspects in the Boston bombing case--one now dead--was sensational and provocative. Very little of it, however, relied on experts who use contemporary rather than outdated and discredited social science. Discussions of the possible role of religion were often stilted or stifled.

Contemporary sociological theory contends that:

• Most people who join social movements, political movements, or religious movements are not mentally ill or stupid. They have adopted an ideology and constructed an identity that in their view justifies their actions--whether these actions are deemed constructive or destructive by society. 
• The vast majority of movement activists never engage in violence. 
• There is no correlation linking religious piety with violence. 
• The radicalization process itself does not cause violence. 
• Dissent, movement activism, and non-violent civil disobedience are part of the democratic process in civil society. 

So we asked a variety of respected academics, researchers, and analysts of movements and political violence to craft an answer to this question: "As a person with expertise, what would you tell a reporter who wanted to know what she or he needs to know to craft a better, more informed story about the Boston bombings as details emerge?"

Click through to read responses from Assoc. Prof. Julie Ingersoll, Prof. Cynthia Burack, Prof. Lauren Langman, Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Assoc. Prof. Jeffery M. Bale, Mustafa E. Gurbuz, and Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

God's Gospel Lizards: Creationist Group to Educate Kansas Public School Students on the "Truth About Dinosaurs" | American Civil Liberties Union

Students at Hugoton High School in Hugoton, Kansas, are set to finally learn the “truth about dinosaurs” next week—at least the truth as the Creation Truth Foundation sees it. The religious organization, which advocates for “a return to all of [the] realities of Biblical Creation,” is scheduled to conduct several mandatory school-day assemblies about dinosaurs for all students and teachers on Tuesday. The ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri and the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief learned about the planned assembly yesterday afternoon and sent a letter today demanding that the public school district cancel the event.

The “truths” about dinosaurs that the Foundation claims to reveal include, among others:

• “God created these creatures along with other land dwelling creatures on day six and they lived with men.”

via www.aclu.org