religious right watch

"Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum"

From the article:

"It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

"Like Sunday school with statues... this is a special brand of religion here. I don't think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth's history."
.....

Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour.

"This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

Chip Berlet writes in "Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War,"

Obama’s Notre Dame speech seemed to reinforce the “common ground” school, which adopts Christian Right frames in the name of compromise. But a careful look at the numbers reveals that Democrats have more to gain by articulating a strong moral message—whatever the content—than by watering down the message in an effort to appease conservative Christians.
.....
I first became alarmed about Democratic Party backpedaling on these issues when Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic Party, came to the 2007 Daily Kos conference in Chicago. Before a crowd composed primarily of progressive or left-leaning Democrats, Dean spoke of reaching out to evangelicals mentioning just one name: the Rev. Rick Warren. While Warren may, as he appears, be a nice guy, he is certainly not a progressive. He is at best a moderate (with some baggage about gay people, especially in Africa). A buzz went around the conference typified by blogger Pam Spaulding who wrote: “I respectfully refuse to consider women’s rights and gay rights as a commodity to be traded for votes from evangelicals.”

Frank Schaeffer apologizes for contributing to Dr. Tiller's murder

Frank Schaeffer writes in "How I (and Other "Pro-Life" Leaders) Contributed to Dr. Tiller's Murder,"

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

I am very sorry.

Liberals call to cave in to the religious right

Rather alarmingly, there are commentators calling for Senator Obama, once he becomes President, to not reverse President Bush's executive orders that limited reproductive choice. Frederick Clarkson of Talk To Action has called these commentators to account in his piece, "When Liberals Become the Religous Right."

From the article,

"E.J. Dionne...joined other Washington Insiders in arguing that the best way for Obama to find common ground on abortion is to capitulate to the demands of Religious Right anti-abortion activists.... In other words, the president should betray his pro-choice supporters and continue policies that are not based on science but on religious right ideology. He says, Obama should govern as the "cultural moderate he promised to be. He should not lose his chance to make cultural warfare a quaint relic of the past."

As Clarkson points out, the religious right shows absolutely no sign of working to make the culture wars a "quaint relic of the past," and he outlines some recent events as evidence.

Cleric: Anglican Church owes Darwin an apology

The story in The Independent. An apology is on the Church of England's website as part of its new Darwin 2009 section:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.

New Stealth Tactic to Smuggle In Creationism

The Christian Right's Got a New Stealth Tactic to Smuggle Creationism into Science Class: "supplemental textbooks."

Chalk one up for reason

Score one for commonsensical science literacy and education. Hat-tip to Pharyngula guest-blogger, Danio,* for catching this poke in the eye of religious rightwing faith-based indoctrination regimes (a.k.a. private conservative evangelical and fundamentalist secondary schools). From the San Fransisco Chronicle article:

A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.
.....
Charles Robinson, the university's vice president for legal affairs, said the ruling "confirms that UC may apply the same admissions standards to all students and to all high schools without regard to their religious affiliations." What the plaintiffs seek, he said, is a "religious exemption from regular admissions standards."

The Univ. of California has the right and obligation to promote science education. It is right and proper for the university to reject as scientific education faith-based non-science, just as it would be for them to reject as scientific education a student's past coursework in, say, medieval medicine (Not that any student is likely to disagree with that one!)--or for that matter a student's would-be science credits from an Islamic school teaching its own brand of creationism.

*Regular Pharyngula blogger Associate Prof. P. Z. Myers is in the Galapagos, possibly catching glimpses of the pretty thing pictured above . . . .

Image: A Galapagos tortoise, a species so-named--in some language or another apparently spontaneously learned--by one, Adam, about 6,000 years ago (give or take), when the first-created ancestor of the fellow above was instantly created by YHWH/God, according to Genesis 2:19-20, and transported to the big naming event in Eden, somewhere in the Middle East. Genesis fails to note how that representative animal and all the others Adam named then settled where they did afterwards. Given that Adam and his wife, Eve, had a whole planet to populate with human beings, Adam was probably enjoying himself (relatively, as it were) while that first ancestor of the poor sod pictured above perha[s lumbered down the banks of the Euphrates, onto the back of a whale, and finally to the Galapagos Islands in the middle of the Pacific, somehow snacking enough along the way to stay fit. Yes, to some, this apparently would qualify as "science." Break giveth me, verily.

In the US, "Darwinism" is about political power. Evolution is not.

Dr. Kate correctly pointed out recently on the Thoughts From Kansas blog:

Creationists insist on calling [evolution] "Darwinism." If they can get enough people to think that science is a religion, then they can argue that their religion ought to get as much time in the science classroom as "our" religion does.

Joshua Rosenau highlights Olivia Judson's argument that "Darwinism" is a "useless phrase," and that "no sensible person ought to call evolutionary biology Darwinism (and...no sensible person does)." Descent with modification, the closely related or single ancestry of all species, and natural selection were genius discoveries about evolution that were published by Charles Darwin (photo), yes. But they were not the whole story. Much more--such as the role of genetics--would be and still is being discovered about evolution. Darwin was the first, best, greatest contributor to our understanding of evolution...but not the sum total of our understanding of evolution, and relative to numerous speculations about evolution that Darwin had, he's even been proven wrong.

(An editorial aside at this point: Technically, Judson's wrong about sensible people not using the term Darwinism insofar as in much of the English-speaking world beyond the US, especially in the UK, the term "Darwinism" is not nearly as politically charged or manipulated, and is used by many scientists and scientifically literate people to mean--and it seems more likely to understood by listeners to mean--"evolution as Darwin explained it, plus what we've learned since that he didn't know, and minus the few speculative things he got wrong.")

So why do American Creationists so doggedly insist on the "Darwinism" term to describe evolution? The real answer: political power.

Those who reject evolution as scientific fact often have political agendas relating to religion-based social conservatism. They aim to obtain power over the lives of others by attempting to make the Theory of Evolution sound like merely a cult--a Charles Darwin cult; spiteful, anti-religious adherence to some opinions Mr. Darwin penned in the 1800's. They often fear certain implications of evolution, many of them imagined--such as "social Darwinism," which is bunk and rejected by scientists far and wide--but not all of them imagined: for example, evolution's truth reveals the vacuousness of literalistic interpretations of creation myths such as those in the Book of Genesis. They fear how particular ideas of their religion-based worldview--for example, that homosexuality is a sinful choice, that political equality for women is a dangerous idea--may be complicated or even discredited by science's truths.

Of course, irrationally fearing the implications of evolution is a bit like irrationally fearing the implications of gravity. Fearing either one to the point that you'd basically deny the thing's reality is stupid; but, understanding them is empowering. Flight itself, though it might seem the opposite of gravity, is not possible without understanding gravity. Fear gravity, and you'll never invent the airplane. You might even be afraid just to wake up! ("What's holding me here in bed? Why do I strain to sit upright? Or what if I suddenly shoot upwards towards the ceiling? I think I'll just go back to sleep; it's too scary!") Similarly, fear evolution and it's like your asleep; you'll never come to understand fundamental realities about life; you'll cure far fewer diseases; save fewer endangered species; understand the complexities of our planet less; languish in a comparatively retarded sense of wonder constrained, delineated, by theology instead of thriving in an ever-expanding sense of wonder as new discoveries about life and the universe are made based on the scientific method of observation and verification.

New, unique perspective on Dover case

Paul Gross in eSkeptic reviews Pennsylvania journalist Lauri Lebo's new book on the Kitzmiller. v. Dover case, The Devil In Dover.

It is to date the most intimate, accessible, and affecting report of this court fight. The conflict sundered relationships among neighbors and in some families of what is ordinarily a sober, friendly, district of the country’s heartland. Her story provides simple summaries of the scientific claims and counterclaims made in the course of that fight; but details of the science at the heart of the argument are not its purpose. Rather the author’s effort is to render an account of the people involved in the fight — on both sides — and the changes wrought by the clash in their lives and in the community.

Common (tired) misconceptions about evolution

The list of common misconceptions about evolution is pathetically long. Here are some of them courtesy of Michael Le Page of NewScientist.

Self-assured anti-intellectuals: could you please stop with the willful ignorance now? Read a little science. It won't kill you. But you sure act as if it could!

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection (1859).