It's hard to believe that another year has flown by, but it's once again time for the Mycological Society of San Francisco's annual Bay Area Fungus Fair at the Oakland Museum of California. The San Francisco Chronicle's description of the event contains a line that probably comes closest to my own sentiments about it:
Wake up and smell the spores, people! It's finally, finally, finally time again for the unutterably fabulous Bay Area Fungus Fair...
The fair starts today and only runs through the weekend. This is the event that turned me into a mycologist; it marks a kind of anniversary for me. I wish I could be there this year!
December 6-7, 2008 Fungus & Fire 39th Annual Fungus Fair
After a forest fire, what is the first sign of life?
Fungi. Their tiny root-like fibers appear on the charred forest floor and begin to break down debris and release nutrients into the soil. This age-old process is crucial to soil restoration and the forest's revival.
Learn about the noble lives of mushrooms at the museum's annual Fungus Fair—Fungus & Fire, Saturday, Dec 6 (10 a.m.–6 p.m.) and Sunday, Dec 7 (12-5 p.m.). The fair explores the role of fungi and mushrooms in the aftermath of California's devastating forest fires...
If you're within 100 miles of Oakland, CA and you've never been to this event before, today's a great day to check it out for the first time. I've been around a few fungi, but the Bay Area Fungus Fair is the premier event for those who want to check out and learn about the incredibly diversity, beauty and even downright weirdness of one of this most unusual kingdom.
The Oakland Museum of California is located at 1000 Oak Street, the corner of 10th. Here's a map.
...Our world is becoming increasingly consistent in its hatred of Christians and more and more prepared to receive God's judgment for its open rebellion against His commands. Soon, I fear for the lost, the festive singing and musical blasphemy embedded below is going to be over for them.
The Bible makes it clear - and in no uncertain terms - that when the world becomes as it was when Lot lived in Sodom, God is going to shake this world like a sapling in a hurricane...
It's coming around! It's coming around as clear as crystal, isn't it?
...It's a Satan thing, you know?
Gee, and I thought these folks wanted the son o'Jehovah to hurry back.
OOGA BOOGA! Satan Satan Satan Satan! The tooth fairy is coming to judge the living and the dead and yank out the fillings of all the bad little boys and girls and toss them into your War on Christmas stockings!
The city government of Rancho Cucamonga, California (population: about 127,000) pressured the General Outdoor sign company to remove an "Imagine No Religion" billboard after receiving 90 complaints about it.
Complaints have led to removal of an atheist group's "Imagine No Religion" billboard in Rancho Cucamonga.
The General Outdoor sign company took down the Freedom From Religion Foundation billboard on Thursday after the city asked if there was a way to get it removed. Redevelopment director Linda Daniels says they got 90 complaints...
Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor says the city shouldn't be censoring speech...
Gaylor is 100% correct; there is absolutely no good argument for removing the sign. If the billboard had been an advertisement for McDonald's and 90 people concerned with juvenile obesity had requested it be taken down, they almost certainly have been ignored and dismissed as cranks. As the sign dissented from a belief in sky-pixies, though, a small number of complaints from true-believers was enough to give the city's government an excuse to exercise censorship.
There's more from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin:
"A city government has no business trying to dictate or influence the content of an advertising image, particularly one that's political and controversial as this is simply because some people don't like it and complained about it," Scheer said. "The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect speech that is unpopular, to protect the views that are in the political minority, as long as they don't cross the line and use the speech for some seriously unlawful purpose, which clearly did not happen here."
Scheer said the city may not have forced General Outdoor to take down the sign, but it's obvious the company did not act independently.
Again, that's exactly right. The sign was in no way obscene. Controversy alone, the mere fact that some people disagree with the billboard's message, is not a legitimate reason for a city government to step in and "request" it's removal.
Rancho Cucamonga Redevelopment Agency 10500 Civic Center Drive Rancho Cucamonga, CA. 91730 1-877-5-Rancho Director Linda Daniels: Linda.Daniels@CityofRC.us
Whether or not you agree with the opinion expressed by the billboard, there can be no doubt that the interference of Linda Daniels constitutes censorship and a clear breach of free speech. She shouldn't get away with it.
Sometimes I wished that I believed in Hell so that I could also believe that there was a special place reserved in it for jackasses who scrawled swastikas on Holocaust memorials.
The Holocaust Memorial in San Francisco's Lincoln Park has been vandalized for the second time in two months with swastikas penned on the bronze sculpture in the latest incident that city officials learned of Wednesday...
"The Holocaust," as the haunting piece by sculptor George Segal is titled, is made up of 11 life-size figures cast in bronze and then painted white. The figures are positioned behind a barbed-wire fence...
A vandal or vandals used a black ink marker to deface one of the figures, some plaques related to the sculpture and a nearby bench. The markings were similar, with the swastika drawn inside the Jewish Star of David symbol.
Last month, a swastika was scratched into the surface of the artwork, commission officials said. It has been vandalized other times, as well. Police were alerted to the latest defacement Wednesday morning...
Because I don't believe in Hell, all I can hope for is that the morons who did this are caught and given the harshest possible sentence under the law for their cowardly and inhumane act. Well, I can hope that they fall into a vat of honey and stumble into a hive of angry Africanized bees, too, but that's not nearly as likely.
Aside from the sheer hatred for others involved in vandalizing a memorial to victims of mass murder, one has to wonder what the point of doing it is in the first place. It's going to get noticed, after all (otherwise, why do it in the first place?) and fixed immediately. Other than making people possessed of something approaching mental health think you're a blatant anal pore, such an act changes nothing. It's not like someone is going to see your handiwork and think, "Gee, maybe the guy who drew the swastika on the depiction of a Holocaust victim has a point. I think I'll become a Neo-Nazi."
As much as the last US elections might have been about change, one thing hasn't changed at all. We are still a nation with only two viable political parties, Republicans and Democrats, and one of those two parties was essentially ground up into something that looks like red sausage. It's now eating itself and, at the same time, trying to figure out what it's going to do next. Personally, I didn't vote for anything or anyone Republican in the last election, nor in the one before that, nor even in the one before that one. The Republicans don't represent anything in which I believe, so I don't have any motivation to vote for them. In fact, they've long since turned themselves into the antithesis of anything for which I would personally stand. They've become the party of social cruelty and culture war. The last election pointed out to them, I think, that there are a lot of people like me out there.
In looking forward, one of the memes that keeps bubbling to the surface is "Palin 2012." Really? This is a good idea? Palin, after all, was brought into the campaign for two reasons. The first was in an attempt to attract support from supposedly disenfranchised Hillary Clinton backers, and all evidence points to her failing miserably in this mission. The second reason was to "energize" the base — the gaggle of socially arch-conservative, religiously motivated and anti-intellectual voters that would normally vote Republican no matter what but for whom McCain himself held little to no appeal. These aren't people who were going to vote for Obama on election day; the danger was that they wouldn't vote at all. Palin's run at vice president was a success on this count, but as we saw, success in this case doesn't look much like victory. Assuming no dramatic swing back to the far right — and the evidence seems to suggest a generational change is at work against such an event — Palin isn't likely to win a nomination in 2012, let alone a general election. This has less to do with her portrayal as a bit of Alaskan fluff by the media. What has become the Republican base is simply shrinking. People are fed up with the fostering of a divided society whose leaders are terrified by progress and insistent upon moral absolutes in all things, that demands absolute freedom for markets even as it erodes the liberty of individuals.
What, then, might be the future of this party? If it doesn't lie with Sarah Palin and her "you betcha, gosh darn golly Joe Sixpack drill baby drill and buy your own damned rape kit" ideologies, then who might carry the torch forward?
We're beginning to see some clues, particularly from the coasts — places in which Republicans haven't been doing very well at carrying national elections for the past couple of cycles and which are generally written off and derided by their base. The fact is, though, that these are also places with the weight of population in their favor, ignored at the peril of ever having influence in politics. The rigidly dogmatic social stances of the GOP as it has been — the GOP of the base — is likely going to have to change if they're going to play in such places as a national party. For instance, even though Proposition 8 passed in California and gay marriage got banned, the fact is that a margin of about 20 points in a 2000 attempt at banning it has shrunk to one of only 5 points this time around. The trend there is clearly, powerfully, away from unreasoning traditionalism and toward increasing tolerance of diversity.
We'll take our first clue from the Governator, California's own Arnold Schwarzenegger. In today's LA Times, Schwarzenegger had this to say about Proposition 8's passage:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday expressed hope that the California Supreme Court would overturn Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage...
Schwarzenegger publicly opposed Proposition 8, which amends the state Constitution to declare that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
On Sunday, he urged backers of gay marriage to follow the lesson he learned as a bodybuilder trying to lift weights that were too heavy for him at first. "I learned that you should never ever give up. . . . They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done."
This is the same Ahnold who had Republicans so excited not long ago that there was talk of amending the US Constitution to allow for citizens not born in the United States to become President for the first time in our history. Has the confluence of these messages sunk in yet, one wonders, with whatever passes for GOP leadership? Touting Palin and similar far-right candidates might play well in particular congressional districts and maybe in population-poor places like Oklahoma and Wyoming, but on the national level it's a sure path to failure.
A second clue comes from the East Coast, particularly from New England. In the Boston Globe, Republican columnist James Peyser talks about "How New England's Republicans Can Hit Restart":
...The number of Massachusetts Republicans in the US Congress remains stuck at zero. The party's US Senate candidate polled less than a third of the votes, winning only one town in the entire state. Come January, there will be not a single New England Republican in the US House of Representatives...
The underlying problem for Republicans is the absence of a compelling conservative vision for the future that is aligned with New England's more tolerant and civic-minded political sensibilities...
Today's conservative agenda includes a censorious social policy that panders to the Christian right, a guns and butter fiscal policy that would make Lyndon Johnson blush, and a Wilsonian foreign policy that is increasingly untethered from the national interest...
A new Republican vision should focus squarely on the future, with a sense of hope for what lies ahead. Any conservatism worthy of the name honors tradition. But there is all the difference in the world between careful stewardship of our heritage and rigid traditionalism... Unfortunately, the loudest voices of conservatism on the national stage today are more likely to bemoan America's decline than to praise its potential. They are also increasingly known for their resistance to science, technology, and change. This rejection of hope and progress runs against the grain of the American spirit and is a formula for even more electoral defeats...
In short, the religious moral absolutists, the Luddites and Creationists, the culture warriors, the Palin/Limbaugh/Coulter far-right wing of the GOP needs to be jettisoned if there's going to be a nationally viable GOP at all. What makes America great, and what excites the electorate, isn't feverish clinging to 18th century absolutism, it's the looking forward to the future, the change, the advancement. It's optimism, not fear. It's opening up the culture to the next leap in its evolution, not huddling in our caves and hoping that the thunder god doesn't hurl lightning bolts down upon our miserable heads. The base is not enough anymore, and good riddance to its dominance.
I've never been one to be in favor of a political system that provides a realistic choice between only two parties. When push comes to shove, I would like very much to see a more parliamentarian system in which there are numerous parties spanning the political spectrum that must forge compromises and alliances in order for government to function. In my ideal world, America would have at least a dozen parties from which voters could choose and complete dominance by any one party would be a vanishingly rare event. Such a system, I think, would better insure that all voices were heard and create better representation for all of us, wherever we might fall across the spectrum. But that's an ideal world that seems incredibly unlikely to come into existence within the lifetime of anyone reading this. It would seem that, for the foreseeable future, we will continue to have only one more party than a one-party state. If Republicans want to preserve even that much diversity, though, it's incumbent upon them to start becoming less ideological and more representative.
The dinosaurs of the extreme right wing aren't going to be much of a part of this sort of outcome, unfortunately for them but much to the joy of those of us who are sick and tired of seeing the populace turned against itself. The purveyors of fear and ignorance are due for a return back to the fringe of political discourse which, in truth, is where they've always belonged. It is in our own best national interest as Americans that the GOP does this in the course of expanding its appeal and becoming a national party. It will help insure that we all do better, that our country does better, that we move forward into something like a hopeful future — even if we as individuals still disagree with some of the party's new platform enough not to vote for them.
Can the GOP run Palin in 2012? Absolutely. It's their prerogative to do so if they wish. Anyone can go to the dance and choose to be a wallflower if they so desire. If they want to move forward and so move the nation forward, though, they'd be well-advised to listen attentively to other voices within their own party. The message coming from the coasts, delivered by people like Schwarzenegger and Peyser, is loud and clear. If the national GOP doesn't want to hear it, if they prefer to stick their fingers in their ears and keep doing the same things that have resulted in the results of the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, then the electorate is also free to shake its collective head and hope that the GOP enjoys its exile in Oklahoma.
In case you haven't seen this video already, this redolent summation of the depths of ignorance and paranoia, watch it now. There will be a quiz.
As much as I find the video itself appalling insofar as what it reveals about just how much the stupid can burn, the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 and similar referenda in places like Florida, Arizona and Arkansas leave me asking the same question the benighted woman narrating it asked. What the hell is oozing out of our ground?
There is a meanness in these new laws, a cruelty that is most loudly voiced by the fact that California will not only put a halt to future same-sex marriages but there are those who are now attempting to void those which have already taken place. Surprise, surprise... they're based in Florida:
Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based conservative legal group, said last week that if Prop. 8 passes, Liberty Counsel would seek to invalidate all same-sex marriages already performed in California. Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based SaveCalifornia.com, said his group would support any lawsuit.
"One of the main reasons for passing Prop. 8 was to have real marriage be a role model for the next generation," he said. "Since these are a bunch of false marriages and false marriage licenses, they are bad examples for little children."
Anyone who still harbors doubt that much of Florida is a percolating, roiling bowl of fundamentalist mythological contagion need look no further than the anthropoid vector of pestilence that is Matthew Staver and his Orwellianly-monikered Liberty Council to put those doubts to rest. Staver, by the way, is a dean at ignorance-factory Liberty University.
That there is no hope that someone like Staver will ever attain to a degree of empathy reminiscent of the better parts of the human race is without question. There are poisonous things in this world and there will always be poisonous things in this world. The question is not whether fundamentally sociopathic, inherently divisive and morally bankrupt people like Staver and Falwell and Don Wildmon can ever be reformed. I would submit that they cannot. Such people will always remain self-made enemies of the culture upon which they have declared war. This is the point of their existence. They thrive on pain and seek the increase of human suffering as a sign of upcoming divine intervention that will usher in a time when the better part of humanity will be tortured for all eternity by their invisible and vindictive father-figure in the sky. They feed on the decay, the hate, the division and the ignorance produced by their activities as surely as any leech slithering from a festering fen seeks to cling to and suck from the femoral artery of some victim. They are beyond all reproach in the perfection of their destructiveness.
In short, they are what is "oozing out of our ground." Still, they and those like them could not alone have passed the barbarisms that are these new laws, including Proposition 8. They must have had complicity in their efforts to corrupt the notion of human rights and the role of government intervention in the lives of others. I do not think that everyone who voted for new laws like Proposition 8 is a leech like Staver, but I do think that many of these people have been deceived, and deception is possible only in the presence of ignorance. The notion that people who prefer sexual interaction with members of their own gender would be in favor of pederasty, bestiality or any number of other outrageous perversions is precisely a product of that ignorance.
These warriors against rational and inclusive culture exploit this ignorance in several ways, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they exploit several varieties of ignorance. Let's face it — most Americans don't know many gay people, or at least aren't aware that they know any. To the bulk of the populace, gay people are an unknown. They're something that doesn't exist as a portion of their community as integral to its proper functioning as any heterosexual individual. They're something that one sees in the media, frequently as a caricature. They're an abstraction; gay people aren't human beings so much as a phantasm that is somebody else's "problem." By keeping them in the abstract, anything can be laid upon them. Gay people can be made out to be abnormal, villainous, scheming... in short, hobgoblins coming from some other reality, some other universe, with malicious intent, like some shadowy horde poised at the border and ready to sack the little villages in which far too many Americans fancy themselves to live. The American Family Association is particularly adept at exploiting this strain of ignorance, peddling videos like They're Coming to Your Town. The probability is that "they" are already in your town, have been there all along, and that your town — and any town — is all the better for it.
They exploit, too, an ignorance that puts forth the idea that the highest purpose of human existence is procreation. It's an assertion I see made time and time again — that homosexuality is a perversion because it doesn't result in reproduction, and that reproduction is the goal which gives purpose to all living things, thus making homosexuality itself a force that runs counter to life. What could be worse than that? What reasonable person could be opposed to the continuation of life itself!
The thing is, when one actually looks at life, that's not what we actually see, particularly as biological individualism gives way to social organization. In any number of truly social insects, for example, the vast bulk of the members of the society do not reproduce, yet they contribute essentially to the continuation of their society. When cognition enters the picture, sex often becomes less bound to reproduction and more a means of enforcing social bonds, too. Even among humans, we do not remember the important figures throughout our history because of the number of offspring they had. Indeed, most Americans would be hard-pressed to rattle off the names of the children of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Adams. We don't remember how many children Einstein had. Would it make any difference to us how we view such people if they'd never reproduced at all? We humans are not bound to our biology in the way that animals are bound to theirs. We can think, we can create, and we can go far beyond the limitations of our bodies. To say that the greatest achievement to which any one of us may attain is mere reproduction is to reduce all of mankind to animals in a menagerie. It robs all of us, even those who promulgate this nonsense, of the basic dignity of what it is to be human. We are more than molecular machines who eat and shit and fuck, and if we are not then we may as well tear down all the churches and all the laboratories and all the museums and stop distracting ourselves from this allegedly greatest good that any of us can spew forth from our various orifices. I, for one, think that we can be more than mere gamete factories. I think more of humanity, and I have a crazy notion that even those who have fallen under the contrary viewpoint would as well if they stopped and considered the sum total of civilization instead of having fallen prey to those who have declared war upon the better angels of human nature.
The questions that Proposition 8 and these similar referenda raise for me, and perhaps now for you, too, is whether we Americans will choose to see ourselves as something debased. Are we the product of a history that has finally cut us loose from the muck of basic biology, that allows us to aspire, to achieve, to no longer be identified in terms of merely what we contribute to some gene pool... or are we the product of some long-ago fall from grace that leaves every individual stained with sin? Will we use our powers of imagination and abstraction to cast one another as enemies, as "outsider" and "insider," to divide ourselves into camps that deserve to dwell either in sunlight or shadow based upon some accident of biology or — perish the thought — even some personal choice that involves no lives apart from our own, or will we use these boons to go beyond these superficial differences to find out that we are all essentially the same, that we all want the same things, and that we are all deserving of the same rights to associate with whom we will, to love whom we will, and to find in each of us that which we have to offer to the rest of us and so to allow every other member of our society the right to do the same?
We know what the Stavers and Wildmons of this country have to say on the matter. They are believers in the essentially impurity or each of us, a blood libel that began in a garden at the confluence of rivers. I suppose we know equally well (especially if you've read through all of this!) what those of us who don't believe in any such "fall from grace" and "original sin" think about it. But there is a great mass of American flesh and blood and mind between these two extremes that live their lives without ever seeing the effect that their decisions about "sanctity" have upon those who now must bear the weight of the stigma that they attach to them. Would they reach the same conclusions if they knew these people? If they saw what a same-sex marriage actually looked like in the light of day? If they came to know, on a personal basis, that the hearts and minds of the people who have entered into them were no different from their own save for the gender of the object of affection?
It is easy enough to be cruel toward an abstraction. Despite our fallibility, though, I think that most of us could not be so callous when called to look into the eyes of fellow human beings. Doing this will be a first great stride in doing away with not only one of the final malingering divisions in American social philosophy, but also in ridding ourselves of a pernicious war that allows a few men to exploit the shortcoming of many. America can be better than this. Just as some little bit of knowledge about the principles of refraction would remove the paranoid fears of the silly woman who made the video that began this entry, so would a little knowledge about what a same-sex marriage really is would remove the paranoia that the possibility "they're coming to your town" portends something terrible.
I am privileged to live in a place, one of only two states in this country, that allows same-sex marriage. I'm thinking of a way in which I might be able to use that happy coincidence in such a way as to lend some aid to those who do not enjoy it. I'll write more about that soon. It is enough to say, at this moment, that I feel like I have to do more about this than I have done until this moment.
In my recently less-than-sporadic efforts to bring you the latest news, I'm sure I'll be the first to mention that Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president. I'm glad for this. The alternative was clearly a very poor one and, of course, we're all aware by now about the historic context of his victory. This is big stuff, a sea-change, a climax in a struggle that began long before my own ancestors ever arrived in America.
I have followed the election closely for these past couple of months, even though I haven't had time to write about it. I have been all too aware of the hatred and panic, as well, that certain elements of our society have expressed over the impending turn in US history as my email box was besieged by dire and dirty "warnings" from Don Wildmon's American Family Association and their nethermost organ, OneNewsNow. To hear them tell it, we are all about to be swept up in a vast wave of stoned, gay, incestuous prostitutes in leather chaps, bearing pitchforks and crucifixes on the soles of their Birkenstocks. Their weather report, now that Obama has been elected, calls for periods of void-swallowing darkness followed by a rain of brimstone with a 30% chance of pale horses storming through the streets of America. In truth, or at least we need all hope, that these are the final fervent prayers and feverish visions of small people with tiny and malign minds, the kind that are ultimately drowned in the eddying currents of human progress.
In all honesty, one of the things that I most look forward to now that the election has been conducted and the ballots tallied is the impending absence of the whiny, shrill, nasal sound of Sarah Palin. I look forward, too, to the absence of scientific research being held up by the losing side every time they wanted to bring up an example of "earmarks" or "pork." Whether they understood basic research or not, the fact that McCain and Palin cited research into population genetic structure or molecular biology or a new projector for a planetarium — a place of science education — did not exactly endear them to this researcher. Had they won, I had visions of funding for research not entirely unlike my own simply vanishing in a puff of ignorance. They will not have the chance to do this, it seems. I count myself and my colleagues fortunate in this regard.
Aside from the historical coincidence (albeit an important one) of his ancestry, we have instead gotten a president elect who, as far as I can discern, is one of the most intelligent and well-educated in our history, and certainly in my lifetime. There are those to whom such qualifications make him, ironically, a member of the elite which, they believe, is a bad thing. There are those who will still judge the fitness of their governmental leadership on the basis of how much they'd like to have a beer with them, and those people will not shut up and go away based simply on the fact that their strange criterion has been repudiated by the electorate. On the other hand, I think that I would enjoy a beer with Barack. I would be very interested in sitting in a conversation with him without any beverages whatsoever, for that matter. We're not too far apart in age, after all, and more to the point I could easily envision a long and deep discussion of political and general philosophy with him. I felt no such thing in regard to McCain, certainly never have for Dubya, and I fear that were beer present during a one-on-one conversation with Palin, I might have sprayed it through my nose soon after she began wagging her chin. That would be rude, and I prefer not to be impolite when at all possible. The likelihood of any of this happening is nil, of course. I'm just Joe the Bio Grad Student and Obama has a government to run... and I have tarsomeres to measure. Still, my sense is that Obama gets it. He understands that the basic research of ten and twenty years ago is the technology of the present, and that once the pipeline empties it takes a long time to fill back up. America has dodged a bullet in a manner of which few people will ever be aware. It was a bullet aimed at our brain and the majority of my fellow Americans were smart enough to duck. Good for us.
So here we are on the first Wednesday in November. In about 60 days, ShrubCo at last begins its well-deserved dissolution and, we can be sure, a new track will be charted. We live in interesting times. Obama will need to exercise what I can only describe as greatness at a time when greatness may at best suffice only to staunch our collective bleeding as a nation. Anything less than greatness, anything short of a full application of his capacity to reason, to plan, to anticipate, is likely to result in a single term. Considering the smoking craters left by ShrubCo across our societal landscape, if Obama doesn't have greatness in him, it follows that we will need to find someone who does in four years' time. I am hopeful for now; the possibilities are endless and in most ways we have nowhere to go but up. Still, I am also a pragmatist, even in my idealism. I will say the same thing now to myself (and those who have read this far) that I said eight years ago: Let's see what this guy can do.
Having said all this, I do think it is important that Obama begin reaching out to the other side after this long and often fear-mongering contest. One way in which he could do this, I think, is to offer John McCain an appointment in his cabinet. As much as I loathe some of the tactics, even what passed for a strategy, in the campaign now ended, McCain should be given the benefit of the doubt and it should be recalled that he was not some fiend before the Ring of Power that was his quest for the presidency turned his Smeagle into our Gollum. McCain's strength, it has been said, was in foreign policy. He might be well-employed as a Secretary of Defense. Even making the offer would help to heal the divisions that were pried wide open in these past months. This might have another, even more important, effect in the near future.
Obama is in a good position, I think, to have an impact on the upcoming reformulation of the Republican Party. I believe that one thing that the GOP will learn from this election is that the base is not enough and, indeed, the very constituencies that make up what they have come to consider their base are, in fact, a polarizing power that precludes their having the support of more reality-based Americans. In the end, after all, McCain had to distance himself from Ted Hagee every bit as much as he sought to distance himself from George Bush. Obama could drive that point home with a few key appointments, I think. Few things could be healthier for this country, even for this civilization, than the showing of the door to the Dominionists and Millennialists by the party over which they have exercised enough influence to pry perilously loose from the reality of American life. We saw the base (and base they were!) "energized" by Sarah Palin, and we saw the GOP lose big. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan have recently said the same thing, so I don't think this idea is too radical. It's time to disentangle that which was supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism from the business of attempts to legislate morality. Giving Americans a choice of a party in which these two things are no longer intricately wound together will be a boon for all of us, even if we are not ourselves fiscal conservatives.
Which brings me, sadly, to the thing arising from this election that most drags upon my spirit this morning. It appears that Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California, is going to pass by a narrow margin. It is for this reason that I prefaced this long and much overdue entry with the point that Obama's win marks a climax in a long struggle but not the climax. Just as there will continue to be intolerance to people of African ancestry in places in America, even though one will be our next President, just so we should keep in mind that others will still be marginalized as well. Even though they lost the Presidential election of 2008, those small-minded busybodies determined to stick their noses in everyone else's crotches as a test for righteousness are still very much with us and they may very well win this victory, as short-lived as it is likely to turn out, on the West Coast of the United States. They are, and will continue to be, dedicated to a "culture war" in which our own culture makes war upon itself. They will continue to seek to do harm in the name of nothing more than personal belief and preference.
They will be with us, I am sorry to say, for many years to come.
It took nearly 400 years for people somewhat like the man we have just elected President to get the right to self-determination, the right to own property, the right to vote as a whole human being (and not just some fraction thereof), and to marry whomever they liked. It took generations to get to this point, and it took sacrifice and struggle and, yes, the deaths of some very good people brought about by some of the worst people who opposed them. This is the course, too, that gay equality advocates have faced. It was once a crime punishable by death to prefer sexual friction with a member of one's own gender. It is not so now. As long as there are people courageous enough to speak out, progress will continue and the tiny, malign minds will, in the end, be swept away by the current of human history once again.
Numerous UC Santa Cruz biologists have been threatened in pamphlets left at a coffee house in California. The home of one was bombed on Saturday while he and his family were at home. A car belonging to a second researcher, whose name has not yet been released, was also bombed and a third researcher received a threatening phone call but no explosives were found on the scene.
The reason for the bombings? One of the biologists, David Feldheim, studies the development of the nervous system of mice in order to learn how the brain and eyes work together and thereby lay down basic research that can someday be used to treat those who have lost their sight to illness or injury. A second one works on Drosophila. He was attacked for using fruit flies in his experiments. Of course, we get the obligatory statement from outspoken nutsack Jerry Vlasak about how this is justified because fruit flies have rights and it's OK to bomb people's homes to defend them. I guess that when you're a fruitcake it seems logical to defend the supposed rights of fruit flies "by any means necessary."
The devices used in two firebombings targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists are similar to some used in the past by animal rights activists, investigators said Sunday.
The bombs were so powerful they were like "Molotov cocktails on steroids," said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark.
One struck the home of assistant biology Professor David Feldheim on Saturday morning, forcing him to flee with his family. The other exploded just a few minutes earlier, gutting a car parked outside the campus home of a second researcher.
Later, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies went to the home of a third researcher who received a threatening telephone message, but officers found no explosives.
More than 50 investigators, including some from the FBI's regional terrorism task force, are looking into the attacks.
Feldheim, whose townhouse was firebombed just after 5:30 a.m., uses mice in laboratory research on brain formation.
He told The Chronicle that he and his wife, along with their 7-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, had to drop a ladder from the window of a second-floor bedroom to escape after smoke filled the home's first floor...
Feldheim was treated at a hospital and released, police said. Clark said the attack on Feldheim is being considered an act of terrorism and attempted murder.
Clark said the bomb at Feldheim's house was similar to those used by animal rights extremists in the past, adding, "There are instructions on how to make it on their Web sites."
Feldheim and the unidentified faculty member who received the threatening message were named on pamphlets that were left on a stack of newspapers in a downtown Santa Cruz coffee shop last Tuesday, Clark said. The unsigned pamphlets at Caffe Pergolesi, which printed 13 researchers' pictures and addresses, called them murderers and torturers and said, "Animal abusers everywhere beware."
The name of the researcher whose car was bombed was not on the pamphlets, Clark said...
A different view was expressed today by Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which often posts on its Web site communiques from activists taking credit for attacks. He said the benefit of animal research does not justify its expense or the exploitation of animals.
Vlasak said the bombers likely were not trying to hurt Feldheim, but were instead "trying to send a message to this guy, who won't listen to reason, that if he doesn't stop hurting animals, more drastic measures will be taken ... it's certainly not an initial tactic, but a tactic of last resort."
Feldheim, whose work includes introducing genes into living mouse brains, said Sunday that his research "is aimed at understanding how brain connections form during development, with special focus on the visual system." He said the work is important "so we can learn how to fix these connections after damage due to injury or disease..."
Jerry Vlasak is the leader of a bona fide terrorist organization and makes no bones about it. Why he's walking around free is beyond me. This mujahadeen should be spooning with a large convict bearing a neck tattoo in a cell in federal prison. Our government has managed to sweep up numerous individuals in Afghanistan and hold them without charge for years in Cuba but they can't manage to round up Vlasak and his stinky hippie axis of evil and provide them the due process to which they are entitled? Sounds like extreme incompetence to me — either that or it simply hasn't been a priority. The current administration doesn't care much for science, after all, so how much priority have they given to putting a stop to this?
The Chronicle article refers to these incidents as "an escalation in a series of protests against UC researchers." This isn't an escalation of protest; these are bombings. Someone's home was set on fire and the lives of himself and his children were immediately put in peril by a group of lunatics who are more concerned with the lives of mice and fruit flies than they are with those of humans. That's not "protest," that is, as FBI investigators point out, attempted murder. If I march outside of a business while carrying a sign, if I sit in the doorway and refuse to move, that's protest. The moment I take out a gun and start firing at office workers, it ceases to be protest and starts to be attempted murder. By the standard used in calling this an "escalation of protest," Jim Adkisson was protesting when he opened fire in a church last week. Buchanan and/or Bulwa should be ashamed of themselves for using that word to describe the bombing of someone's home. Is it an "escalation of protest" if I were to be so incensed by this that I waited for them in the Chronicle's parking lot with a machete? Somehow, I don't think they'd use the word "protest" in describing the incident to the police while ambulance attendance packed their severed digits in ice; they'd rightly use words like "assault" and "attempted murder" and "unjustified attack" and "maniac." Acts of violence, attempts at murder, are not legitimate protest. Setting fire to a house containing a seven year old child is even further from it.
Jerry Vlasak's moronic assertion that the bombers didn't mean to hurt Feldheim and his family is so unbelievably stupid that the man should be taken into protective custody at the very least to insure that he doesn't cause himself injury by wandering into a busy intersection. Anybody who buys a statement like that should be treated likewise. The intent of this terrorist act was precisely to cause harm. Feldheim had to be taken to the hospital. The house filled with smoke and the people inside were lucky enough to be able to escape by climbing out of a second-story window. Who in their right mind wouldn't see not only the physical damage that has been done here but the psychological harm that has been done to the victims? How well will Feldheim's children be sleeping? How many nightmares have been inspired, how much fear, how much trauma?
Mice and fruit flies don't have any rights at all. They're born, maybe they reproduce, and they end up as sustenance for some predator. Rights are a social and political construct; insects and rodents have no concept of such things. By the same token, the terrorists involved in these incidents — including Vlasak — should lose all of their rights. They've demonstrated their violent intent toward society and should lose the benefits of membership therein. Vlasak's rights should extend at this point only to that of remaining silent and having an attorney present, and to a speedy trial, and those are the only ones to which he is entitled. He and his junior Unabomber crew deserve even less consideration than do the mice and flies whose lives they consider more valuable than those of the human beings who have dedicated their lives to better understanding the biology and ecology of those creatures for the benefit not only of humans but of the natural world itself — a world which the terrorists themselves don't begin to understand and care nothing about.
As members of civilized society, however, I do think we should give these monsters what they want once they're appropriately rounded up. We can dress them in organic orange jumpsuits and leave them manacled to trees and rocks in the wilderness and let them commune with nature all they like for the day or two that they'd survive their punishment. I still think they have a valuable role to play in the magnificent web of being that is life on earth. They can do community service by explaining to bears, rats, mountain lions, mosquitoes and ants the rights to which they believe the animals are entitled as their entrails are being extracted and maggots hatch in their eye sockets. We can even reduce the duration of their sentences if they can remember the words to "The Circle of Life" while they're being consumed by their clients.
Once they've become bear burgers and vulture vittles, those of us who actually do care about the well-being of this planet and its inhabitants enough to dedicate ourselves to understanding how it all works together will be able to get back to work without pondering whether or not we should be arming ourselves against a cowardly militia of malodorous malefactors.
Today's Daily Jesus is a double-header of divine apparitions that comes to us from the city of Porterville, a community of about 55,000 people in Southern California's Tulare County. It all started with an angel that appeared in the window of a Color Tile store at night. When the owner of the Xpress Gas and Mini Mart across the street turned off his lights to demonstrate to the traffic-blocking crowd of several hundred that gathered that the "angel" was just a reflection, they did the only thing they could. They saw Jesus hanging in a palm tree.
An image of what appeared to look like an angel on the window of a local store is gone but a sea of people longing to catch a glimpse of the heavenly creature flocked to the site tonight hoping to see not only the angel but also something new — an image of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross on a nearby palm tree.
"I went looking for the angel and it was gone," Robert Sanchez said today. "Then someone said Christ was there and I looked up and I saw him. Christ was on the cross, arms out, head down, his beard, his eyes — down to the last detail. You can see his ribs and his stance with his knees up and arms hanging to the side. I was thrilled. To have two sightings in the same place — it confirms that the image on the window was not fake..."
It's hard to argue that the reasoning of Robert Sanchez could possibly be invalid. If I tell you that I own a Lamborghini and that I keep the Hope Diamond in the glove box, clearly it must be true. I couldn't be lying twice in a row.
Crowds of people could be seen on both sides of Olive Avenue. Some people parked east of the highway and walked to the 1000 block of West Olive Avenue...
The Rev. Steve Benton, pastor from Hope Restoration Ministries in Poplar, placed a cross at the base of the palm tree.
"My wife and I were here to share our faith with the people who are drawn to this image in the window," Benton said. "I have been out here for two nights and never saw it myself but these people are looking for something to fill the vacuum in their lives. That is why I put up the cross, because it is an image that is really clear. People are looking for something. People are looking for hope..."
Great, people are looking for hope and you give them an Iron Age torture implement. Ah well, anywhere the rubes gather is a good place to seek out marks.
Porterville resident Trina Leon said her heart felt heavy when she saw the people.
"My heart just sank. People want to believe," Leon said. "I said 'People, this is not of God.' It was an illusion. I call it mass hysteria. People want to have hope but that hope needs to lie in God. Instead of turning to a palm tree or a window, they need to look for God..."
So close! Trina almost had it there. The reflection in the window is every bit as valid a reason to hope for anything as is believing in the mythology behind it in the first place. If they didn't already believe in gods and angels, the reflection and the light-play in the palm tree wouldn't have been interpreted in the way they are in the first place. These things exist in a smear of light on some smudged glass as they do in any given church.
The angel in the window turned out to be nothing more than reflections of light from the mini mart across the street. But people who have been gathering at the site are not convinced.
"People will see whatever they want to see. That's imagination," Adel Joudi, owner of Xpress Gas and Minit Mart, said. "The angel has been there since I opened the store two years ago. It was a light reflection. If I turn on the light, it is there. If the light is off, it is gone."
Nearly 400 people arrived Monday night to see the angel, he said.
"I had to call the police," Joudi said. "They couldn't control the crowd. I had to shut my store down for two hours while they got all the cars out of here..."
Joudi gets it! Look at that... some rationality amidst the gawking crowd of turkeys in a thunderstorm. While these people are standing around and gawking at nothing, Joudi is trying to run a business and they're not letting him. The poor guy has to deal with a crowd of credulous true-believers who won't even believe that the "angel" is nothing but their own ignorance manifesting itself when he makes it disappear by flicking a light switch to the "off" position.
"But people wouldn't believe it. They wouldn't leave. They hung around the area until 1 a.m. to see if the angel would return," Joudi said. "I just want them to go away. I want them to know that the angel will not return. I have a business. I just want people to respect my business..."
Sorry, Joudi, but a lot of people in Porterville believe they have the right to take money out of your pocket because God is sending them signs. Now, would you kindly turn the lights back on so that there will be something to do at night for the terminally gullible?
There are pictures, of course. First, here's the Angel of the Mini Mart:
And second, here's the Jesus of the Palm Tree Outside the Mini Mart:
Color me convinced! That second photo looks particularly like Jesus, doesn't it? That was contributed by Porterville resident Shonna Uram who shares with us the following "thought":
I am the one who submitted this photo, my daughter took this picture last night, and if you were truly there last night, like we were, then tell me why do you think over 300 people were standing there looking at this and taking pictures of it, if nothing was there? We know what we saw and all the others that were there saw and the photo is the proof... Laugh all you want to I will pray for you...
I mean, what more can you possibly demand as proof that angels and Jesus are visiting Porterville, California? Nearly 300 people think they are and, as Robert Sanchez has reminded us, they saw two different things. That should be enough proof for anyone. Three hundred turkeys staring open-beaked at the clouds while the rain comes down just couldn't be wrong.
Dr. Donald Wildmon is founder of the American Family Association and an organizer of the Arlington Group. He says passage of the California marriage amendment is critical.
"If we lose California, if they defeat the marriage amendment, I'm afraid that the culture war is over and Christians have lost," says Wildmon, a 30-year veteran of the culture war. "I've never said that publicly until now -- but that's just the reality of the fact.
"If the homosexuals are able to defeat the marriage amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, then the culture war is over and we've lost -- and gradually, secularism will replace Christianity as the foundation of our society," he adds.
Californians are likely to uphold the right to gay marriage in the state by voting against a ballot measure that seeks to override a court ruling allowing same-sex unions, poll results showed on Friday.
The Field Poll survey firm found 51 percent of voters oppose the measure, which proposes an amendment to the state's constitution recognizing marriage as only between a man and woman, while 42 percent were in favor...
Could it be? Will the defeat of Proposition 8 in California really mark the end of the Taliban's influence so-called Culture War in America? Will Don Wildmon quietly close the doors and disconnect the phone banks of the American Family Association, pack his bags and move to whatever country is the Christian fundamentalist equivalent of Afghanistan circa 1999? Will Ann Coulter have to take a part-time job as a hat rack in order to make ends meet? Will Bill O'Reilly at long last answer to his true calling and become a Muppet? Will I actually live to see the day that the shrilling of those who use deity as a periscope to peer between the bedsheets of America and pass judgment upon what they find are no longer met with microphones?
I would like to believe it. For once, I wish I could believe something that oozed from betwixt the labia of Don "Dear Manmeat" Wildmon. I am not that naive, however. I know all too well that the eventual defeat of California's Proposition 8 will only trigger off more excited ejaculations from the radical right. I wish that I could believe that a day was coming as soon as this November that would mark the end of more than 30 years of the degradation of the promise of personal liberty upon which America was founded. I hope fervently to see a time in this country where whatever quirk of nature or nurture or personal choice or whatever it is that decides which gender attracts and which does not attract some person ceases to be a deciding factor in what share of the rights, privileges and responsibilities to which that person will be admitted. There has only ever been one issue in this Culture War, and it is that of who gets to define morality. It has always been about whether our culture will take it upon itself to decide on absolutes that would be applied to acts undertaken by consent of the parties involved that have no effect upon those who do not participate.
I want America's obsession with other people's relationships and other people's sex lives to end. I would like to see Wildmon's prediction about the end of the effort to impose a Christian shariah upon America come to pass. For all of the admonitions about America being a Christian country, I don't see the Wal-Marts and McDonald's empty on Sundays. As far as I'm aware, remembering to keep the sabbath per the third commandment doesn't mention anything about shopping being exempt and yet stores find enough customers to make it worth their while to stay open and nobody is putting propositions on state ballots to change this. Let's not kid ourselves as to what this has always been about and what the nature of this country is and what the nature of the Wildmons and Hagees and Robertsons of this land is.
There isn't enough space between these people and Fred Phelps to pass a thread as it is. The death of Proposition 8 will only push them further into the realms of fury. These Christian Culture Warriors have already come quite close to proclaiming that "God Hates America." What did they say when 3,000 innocent people died horribly in a Manhattan skyscraper? What was the reaction when a hurricane decimated New Orleans? What was it that Ray Comfort has to say about the reason that people are losing their homes and their livelihoods in the conflagrations that have dotted California — and largely in conservative areas, mind you, but it serves his purpose to make such statements?
They all come down to exactly the same thing that Phelps' incestuous little clan waves about on placards at the funerals of those who were shoved into danger's way at the behest of one of Evangelicism's own in the first place. "God hates America."
A little bit of prediction here. If (I think it is a matter of when, not if, but I'll let it go for now) Proposition 8 is defeated, we won't see the end of the American Culture War. We'll simply have Don Wildmon making some bizarre statement to the effect that Jehovah has come down from on high to whisper into his ear and urge him to stand and fight. We'll hear the screechings of the usual harridans and bullyboys as they pray publically for California to fall into the sea. That's all we'll get.
I do think there will come a time when this ends, when America finally tires of this stupid game of ruining people's lives and that last shudder finally runs down its collective spine as it finally shrugs off the last of these hate peddlers and casts them into the obscurity their ilk inhabited in more reasonable eras. I don't know whether that will be within the remaining 20 or 30 or 40 years of my lifetime, but everything I have seen, from the ascendancy of the Moral Majority to the present day, tells me that the defeat of one proposition in California won't be the end of this. I know that what Wildmon is doing is telling a lie to rally his stormtroopers. All is fair, after all, in love and war.
Someday, perhaps there will be a Culture Love instead of a Culture War. That day will not come upon us in November 2008.
The toxicology report on Sergio Aguiar, the California man who turned his two-year old son into pulp on a road near Turlock while telling witnesses that the child had demons in him, has been released. No drugs were found in his system. This confirms the prior observation made by investigators that no drugs were found on his person nor in his home or truck.
Toxicology tests came back negative Thursday for the Turlock man who beat his young son to death last month, adding to the mystery of why a father would commit such a heinous act.
Sergio Casian Aguiar, 27, had no drugs or alcohol in his system that might help explain his behavior, said Kristi Ah You, Stanislaus County chief coroner...
Investigators and co-workers said Aguiar had no criminal history or signs of mental illness, though witnesses on the night of the attack said Aguiar spoke of "demons" within his son...
Phil Trompetter is a psychologist who spent 30 years working with law enforcement agencies in Stanislaus County, providing police and forensic psychology...
Trompetter spoke Thursday about the case, but emphasized his hypothesis on Aguiar's actions was based on media reports.
"I don't want to sound like I'm diagnosing this guy," he said. "But it sounds like brief psychotic disorder ... a delusional belief that his son was possessed by demons..."
Trompetter, however, could not recall a case of the disorder resulting in someone committing "such a heinous act of violence."
Brief psychotic disorder? Maybe. How about a long-term psychotic disorder — belief in demons in the first place. As Trompetter notes, people afflicted with brief psychotic disorder lose touch with reality by definition, but this doesn't normally result in violent acts. It typically results in delusions. Adam Weir-Perry spent decades working with people who suffered from the disorder and wrote about it in his Roots of Renewal in Myth and Madness. When religious delusions manifested as a result of these psychotic breaks, the victims typically believe themselves to be a figure of religious importance, but they don't kill others based upon that.
Aguiar may well have suffered a break, but it was as underlying belief in the reality of demons that led to the brutal murder of his son. He might have lost his self-control, but this is what he stopped controlling. Belief in demons isn't the result of a brief psychotic episode; it's a part of established belief in many religions. It's a long-term psychotic delusion endorsed by the officials and leaders of those religions. Sometimes it's the basis of a religious career. It is disingenuous in the extreme to state that a belief in demons is so unusual that it must be the product of the sudden onset of a mental illness that previously showed no signs of having existed. Just ask the Texas Supreme Court; exorcisms are increasingly common, so much so that special laws protecting them have to be enacted and reviewed.
This story has been quietly slipping from attention. It shouldn't. This is an extreme case in terms of the result but not in terms of the underlying beliefs. As long as people keep concocting and believing in spirits that avoid confronting man's sole responsibility for the evils that exist in the world, we'll see horrors like that of Sergio Aguiar. It's not that rare. There are cases of death-by-exorcism reported every year in the United States and almost certainly at least as many in which the role of supernatural belief goes without notice.
Belief in demons is no different from children blaming the messes in their rooms on their invisible friends. It's time for humanity to grow up and discard this nonsense. We should hope for a day when nobody knows what words like "demon" and "angel" mean anymore.
There's no real mystery as to why Sergio Aguiar murdered his son. He gave his reason. He had to get the demons out. What's so mysterious about that? Priests say the same thing every day and nobody wonders about why they believe in such things and why they act upon those beliefs.
The latest survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life was released yesterday and it's got some interesting bits. Every newspaper is reporting on it, but so far the best summary I've seen has been in the Boston Globe. Some excerpts from that article:
The United States is a nation of believers: most Americans say they believe in God, they pray, and they attend worship services regularly; they also believe in angels and demons, in heaven and hell, and in miracles.
But they also say, contradicting the teachings of many faiths, that truth comes in many forms. Large majorities of Americans say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life, and that there is more than one way to interpret religious teachings...
New Englanders are among the least likely to say they are religious, according to the study. Massachusetts lags behind the nation - often near the bottom of all states - in the percentage of its residents who say they are certain that God exists...
The study confirms a fact known widely by scholars of religion in public life: the more often people attend worship, the more likely they are to be politically conservative. Mormons and evangelical Protestants are the most likely to be doctrinally orthodox and politically conservative, while Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists are more liberal in both their theology and their politics, the study finds.
But there is tremendous diversity within each faith - among evangelical Protestants, for example, only 52 percent describe themselves as conservative, and 30 percent say they follow government and public affairs only some of the time. Although evangelicals have traditionally been viewed as Republican voters, the poll suggests a significant minority do not view themselves as conservative...
...The study found that 70 percent of Americans - and even 57 percent of evangelical Protestants - believe that many religions can lead to eternal life...
"While one applauds what could be thought of as an openness to other religions, one has to wonder if this is essentially bland secularism," said Todd M. Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary...
The poll, like many others, finds Americans claiming to be deeply faithful - 92 percent say they believe in God. But conceptions of God vary - 60 percent, including most Christians, say they believe God is a person, while 25 percent, including pluralities of Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, believe God is an impersonal force...
On gay rights, Buddhists, Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants are the most likely to say homosexuality should be accepted, while Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims and evangelical Protestants are the most likely to say homosexuality should be discouraged. Overall, 50 percent of Americans said homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 40 percent said it should be discouraged...
One of the implications I see in this survey is that Americans make a lot of stuff up, picking and choosing to create their own religions that support what they already believe. That's better than strict dogmatism, but it also demonstrates a certain refractory essence when it comes to examining empirical reality. While the survey never asks a question that would reveal the source of the religious melange held to by large numbers of Americans, I suspect that much of it has its origins in various self-help type books and talk shows. Oprah Winfrey probably exerts a good deal of influence on the religious landscape, for example. Whatever the sources, though, one might well ask why it is necessary to look outside of the natural world to the supernatural and posit things like eternity to begin with. That's where the refractory nature of belief comes into play; people believe in things like heaven and demons despite there being no evidence that they exist, but they'll reject empirical knowledge that conflicts with their beliefs.
Looking at the massive amount of data comprised by the US Religious Landscape Survey itself reveals a number of items worth consideration. For example, the single largest religious group in the US is identified as the Evangelical Protestant Tradition (26%). On a state-by-state basis, that tradition is most prevalent in Oklahoma (about 53%), Arkansas (~53%) and Tennessee (~51%) and least prevalent in Utah (~7%). New England has comparatively few; Connecticut/Rhode Island combined, for example, stand at about 10% Evangelical, and Massachusetts is at 11% as are New Hampshire and Vermont.
Catholicism is the next largest religious tradition, about 24% of the entire US population. It's most prevalent in the Northeast on a state by state basis. 43% of those surveyed in Massachusetts identify themselves as Catholic, as do 43% of those in Connecticut/Rhode Island and 42% in New Jersey. On the other hand, it's a long way between Catholics in Alabama (6%), Tennessee (7%) and West Virginia (7%).
16% of Americans consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular religion. That includes 26% of New Hampshire/Vermont residents, 25% of those from Maine, and 27% of respondents in Oregon. Missionaries looking for converts would have their work cut out for them in Kentucky (12%), Texas (12%), and North Dakota (12%), the states with lowest numbers of unaffiliated respondents.
The most religious state in the country — or at least the one where the most people said they have absolute certainty in the existence of God, demons, hell, what have you — is Mississippi (91%), but theists in other southern states shouldn't despair too much. The southeastern US is a hotbed of absolute faith; Alabama (86%) and South Carolina (86%) are hot on Mississippi's tail. At the other end of the spectrum are Vermont and New Hampshire (54%), Maine (59%) and Connecticut/Rhode Island (57%), the only states where fewer than 60% of respondents were True Believers. Massachusetts came in at 60% on this question, which isn't too shabby, all things considered. Makes me proud to be a New Englander. This is all very much in keeping with the question of how important religion is/should be in one's own life. 82% of Mississippians think it's "very important," but only 36% of New Hampshire and Vermont residents agree.
24% of Americans surveyed said that their own religion was right and everybody else was wrong. That view is most prevalent in Utah, where 50% of respondents hold it. When it comes to religious tolerance, you can't beat Maine; only 13% of those respondents took the "my way or the highway to hell" position. Maine isn't much more tolerant than Massachusetts (15%) or New York (18%), though.
Fully 33% of Americans said that they believe in absolutely literal interpretation of their religious scripture (also known as fundamentalism). If you want to find concentrated fundies, Mississippi is definitely the place to be. It leads the nation in fundamentalist presence; 64% of respondents there are religious literalists. Alabama is far behind (54%) and West Virginia a distant third (53%). New Hampshire/Vermont (16%), Massachusetts (18%) and Connecticut/Rhode Island (18%) residents are the least likely to be fundamentalist in their views of scripture.
But how effective is prayer, you ask? Well, so did the Pew people. It turns out that praying in Mississippi is most likely to make your wish come true; 46% there say their prayers are answered at least once a month. Alabama is a close second to the divinely-poofed paradise of answered prayers at 44% and Tennessee and North Carolina tie for third at 42%. If you're in New Hampshire/Vermont (19%), Massachusetts (21%) or Maine (21%), God's ignoring you. The survey never does ask what people are praying for, though. It could be that people in Mississippi are praying more often for a steaming bucket of crawdads and Vermonters for world peace. Crawdads are a lot easier to come by, after all. The survey doesn't say.
There's a lot more information to be had in this survey and it's all rather interesting. Go click around.
On a personal note, I'm very glad to be in Massachusetts and not, say, Mississippi, Alabama or Tennessee. Fundamentalism just isn't my thing (surprise!) and I like living in a place where religious belief doesn't play a major role in shaping the culture. I saw enough of that in North Florida, thanks.
On a somewhat critical note, though, I wonder about the utility of lumping some states together. I'm not sure that lumping Vermont and New Hampshire makes for an accurate read. Vermont is an extremely liberal state, whereas New Hampshire tends to be fiscally conservative and socially libertarian. Likewise, my experience in both Florida and California lead me to believe that those states should really be split into regions for a survey like this. The extreme southern part of Florida is very different from the north in its social, religious and political make-up as are the coastal and inland parts of California. New York, for that matter, is an exceptionally heterogeneous state. Binghamton and Elmira have very different outlooks on religion than does New York City.
Meanwhile, another day is beginning here in largely secular, non-fundamentalist, gay-accepting, stem cell research embracing Massachusetts. No crawdads here, but the clam chowdah is pretty damned good. Maybe if I pray hard enough I'll get a free bowl for lunch today. My odds appear to be about 1 in 5 that it'll materialize sometime over the course of the next month, anyhow.
An article appears in today's San Francisco Chronicle that focuses on the reaction of witnesses to the beating death of the "demon-possessed" son of Sergio Aguiar. A couple of law enforcement people and others talk about the inability of witnesses to the crime to intervene due to their being in a kind of shock. It's a good point; I've noticed a lot of internet people faulting witnesses for not doing more than calling authorities and these same people are particularly fond of bragging about what heroes they would have been in the same situation.
More interesting to me, though, is that authorities themselves appear to be having some trouble with Aguiar's motive in this atrocity. The perpetrator stated his reason for beating his son to death; the boy had demons in him. So far, there has been no evidence that Aguiar was on drugs. While toxicology test results are still two weeks away at least, the article states that no evidence of drug use was found either at Aguiar's home or in his truck. People who knew Aguiar and had interacted with him right up until the time of the murder didn't see any changes to his personality and, again, he hadn't ever been treated for mental illness nor been arrested before.
...Sheriff's investigators are still trying to determine why Aguiar, a grocery store worker who recently split up from his schoolteacher wife, killed his son so savagely. The boy's name still has not been released.
Investigators have learned that Aguiar left his home near downtown Turlock before the beating, but they don't know why he drove about 10 miles into an area of cornfields and dairy ranches, Singh said. He said investigators had found no evidence of drug use at Aguiar's house or in his pickup, though results of toxicology tests have not yet come back.
Aguiar's wife, who was in Southern California at the time of the slaying, and others have told investigators that Aguiar "wasn't acting differently than how he normally acts," Singh said. Aguiar's family members, who live in Mexico, were traveling to Stanislaus County to talk to deputies, Singh said.
"As of right now," Singh said, "nobody's saying he was having problems at all. It's baffling. It sounds like there was nothing anyone could have done."
I would consider belief in demonic possession itself a form of mental disorder, but since mental illness is to a large degree a product of cultural definition and the culture in which Aguiar committed his horrific act of brutality is currently in the throes of the Disenlightenment, there are a lot of people — perhaps a large majority — that would disagree with me on that point. Surely cling2Christ, a commenter on the Modesto Bee website whom I cited previously, would disagree. Here's another True Believer, this time from that bastion of spittle-spewing madness known as Free Republic, who also disagrees:
After being in the ministry for over 10 years and leading hundreds of deliverances, I can tell you for an absolute fact that demonic oppression and possession is unfortunately very real. Demons are nothing to be afraid of if you are a born again Christian (1 John 4:4, Luke 10:19), but are very scary to those who haven't asked Jesus Christ to live in their hearts as Savior and Lord. They are simply fallen angels who serve Satan and do all they can to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10) from God's highest creation - mankind.
There are many instances of the Lord Jesus casting demons out of people. One example is found in Luke 13:10-17. In this passage a woman was afflicted for 18 years by a demon of infirmity sent from Satan. You can't get much plainer language than what. Jesus prayed for her and the woman was instantly healed.
So maybe Aguiar was right; clearly his two-year old son hadn't been "born again" and couldn't have "accepted Jesus in his heart." The religious right and affiliated sorts often like to protest that, for example, public education is a form of indoctrination and that there shouldn't be laws about corporal punishment of children because parents know what's best for their offspring. How would anyone who believes in possession and these other things as well even begin to go about making an argument that Aguiar's child wasn't possessed by demons and that Aguiar, as his father, could tell? Many of these same people are making the assertion, after all, that Sergio Aguiar was possessed. The only justification that seems to be used for doing so is a revulsion over the crime itself.
Luckily for the rational segment of American society, the assignment of guilt for a crime is assigned based upon evidence and not upon beliefs. Still, I shudder to think of what would happen to our legal system were those who believe in demonic possession ever to have their way with it. Sometimes it seems to me that we may find out one of these days.
More details have come out about the beating death of the toddler in Turlock. The perpetrator was the victim's father, Sergio Aguilar. The victim was his two year old son, and it appears certain now that the motive was exorcism. I am surprised to hear that Aguilar had no previous criminal record and no mention is made of prior treatment for a mental disorder in the latest update. This one comes from the San Francisco Chronicle:
(06-16) 14:47 PDT TURLOCK (STANISLAUS COUNTY) -- A man who police say punched and kicked his 2-year-old son to death on a country road outside Turlock calmly told motorists who stopped at the scene that he had to "get the demons out" of the child, a witness said today.
The man, a 27-year-old Turlock resident, told people who tried to stop him that the boy was "trash," said Lisa Mota, 23...
What prompted Aguilar to carry out the attack is still not known. Authorities do not know whether he was drunk or on drugs, and toxicology reports on him and his son will not be available for three to four weeks, said sheriff's spokesman Deputy Royjindar Singh.
Aguilar had no criminal history, Singh said. "From what we can tell, he's never been arrested," Singh said...
"He wasn't acting like a crazy person, running around or screaming," Mota said. "He said, 'I've just got to get the demons out of him.' He was very calm.' "
The boy was beaten beyond recognition. His name has not yet been released. DNA tests will be conducted on him, Aguilar and the boy's mother to confirm their relationship, Singh said.
The mother was out of town Saturday night when Aguilar killed his son, Singh said...
These are only the incidents that I've personally run across in the year-and-two-weeks that I've been keeping this blog. The sad fact is that the killing and near-killing of children by exorcism happens with alarming frequency. It's equally alarming, at least to me, that people believe in demonic possession in the first place. Those who believe in such things are, I think, suffering under a form of delusional disorder and pose a danger to those over whom they have some degree of control.
It is my greatest hope that someday this bizarre and pernicious belief in possession will wind up on the trash heap of history where it should have landed at least 300 years ago. It is a belief that helps no one, harms everyone involved with it, and leads to tragedy time and time again.
There aren't any demons other than the ones certain backwards and ignorant segments of society convince themselves exist. They're voices in people's heads. Demons are a mental illness, not some independent metaphysical force. The evil in the world is the product of humans, not that of some infernal factory floor. It's far past time that civilized, enlightened, educated society stopped making room for this nauseating mythology. It deserves no respect and those who believe in it need treatment, not our assent — silent or otherwise.
A horrific story is developing out of a rural section of California. A man in Turlock, in rural Stanislaus County, pulled his truck to the side of the road, took an infant from the passenger seat, and proceeded to beat and stomp the child to death even as onlookers attempted to intervene. In the end, police officers shot the man to death, but not before he beat the toddler literally to a pulp. Officials will attempt to identify the child based on DNA and are not releasing the name of the man and his relationship to the child.
The story is made just a little bit more awful (as if anything could) by a statement made by the man to the effect that he thought the child was possessed.
As eyewitnesses watched in horror, a 27-year-old Turlock man punched and stomped a toddler to death on a darkened country road Saturday night in Stanislaus County before a police officer shot and killed the attacker.
Eyewitnesses tried to stop the man, who swung and slammed the child into the asphalt behind his parked four-door Toyota pickup.
Investigators spent Father's Day trying to understand and cope with the savage attack on Bradbury Road, 10 miles west of Turlock near cow pastures and dairy farms...
Robinson jumped from his vehicle and confronted the man, who lunged at him. Robinson said the man wasn't screaming and wasn't loud, but was forceful, saying "demons" were in the boy.
"Give me the knife. Give me the knife," the man said as he grabbed for a pen in the fireman's front pocket.
"There was a total hollowness in his eyes," Robinson said, "like I could see right through to the back of his head..."
The man ripped the child out of a car seat in the back of a pickup truck, threw him to the ground and kicked and stomped him against the pavement, witnesses told deputies. At least three people yelled at the man and attempted to pull him off the boy, but were brushed back by the attacker.
Coroner's deputies believe they know the boy's name, but "due to the severity of his injuries making a visual identification is nearly impossible," Singh said...
A second report on this incident also makes mention of a possible religious connection:
Isabelle Thomas, who lives a few hundred yards from the scene, was working at Emanuel Medical Center, a nurse in the surgical unit, when her son called her with word something bad had happened. Soon she heard of the little boy who died 500 yards from her front door.
"I couldn't go to sleep. I couldn't rest without seeing it and all that blood. I couldn't believe all that blood," she said.
Sunday morning, she watched a tow truck haul away the pickup. The inside cab, she said, was smeared with blood. A rosary swung from the rearview mirror...
For those of us who embrace rationality and reject the notion of supernatural agency in this incident, the most likely scenario for such a brutal event is that the perpetrator was delusional and the child an innocent victim. No demons were involved whatsoever for the simple reason that there are no such thing as demons. It's an all-too-human horror, a very material tragedy, likely brought on by some profound mental disorder. When the identity of the man in the truck is revealed I fully expect that it will be accompanied by a revelation of previous acts of violence and treatment for a psychopathological condition.
On the other hand, there are also people who see in this evidence for demonic possession — of the perpetrator. In comments on this story appearing on The Modesto Bee website, an author using the ID "cling2Christ" states:
The Last Days
This is horrible, and Jesus warned us that as "the day" approaches, things will only get worse and worse until the end comes. This man thought the baby had demons, the article says, but in fact, most likely the man himself was demon possesed. "This know also that in the last days perilous times will come. For man shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, WITHOUT NATURAL LOVE, UNFORGIVING, slanderers, WITHOUT SELF CONTROL, BRUTAL, despisers of those that are good, traitors, HEADSTRONG, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." 2Timothy 3:1-4
cling2Christ wrote that comment just before 1 AM. In the five hours between that time and the time I write this entry five reviewers have rated the comment, all of them giving it a 5 out of 5 — an indication that they are in agreement with cling2Christ's assertion of demonic involvement. Cling2Christ has no more evidence that the perpetrator was possessed than the perpetrator had that the infant was "full of demons" and is no more rational than the perpetrator himself.
After all, we've been told recently by a Catholic church official who has himself performed over 70,000 exorcisms that "Everybody is vulnerable to the work of Satan." In light of statements like this one by Gabriele Amorth and that made by cling2Christ, could it be said that the infant wasn't possessed by demons once we'd accepted the premises put forward by them? Perhaps the infant, the man in the truck and the officer who shot him were all possessed. Perhaps it's all some Satanic conspiracy to shock us all. I certainly feel a bit like screaming and drawing my limbs into my body like a tortoise draws its limbs into its shell after reading about this. Once supernatural, untestable factors are thrown into the mix, things for which we can't hope to find empirical evidence (I think with very good reason), we can say anything and determine nothing.
Perhaps in the end the thing that separates Amorth and cling2Christ from the lunatic in the truck in Turlock isn't reason — none of the three are rational — but a propensity toward carrying out violence. Not all delusional people are violent and not all violent people are delusional. When the delusion is demonic possession and the like, though, they all bring a little more fear into the world to pile on top of the occasional real terrors it already holds.
I see no reason to believe that demons exist at all, that supernatural entities are vying for metaphysical things like souls, or that brutality occurs due to anything other than the actions of violent people. It's a position that I'll continue to hold until somebody can show me a soul or a demon or even reasonable evidence based upon which one could logically infer that such things exist.
This blog is about whatever I'm pondering at the moment that I write in it. That may include anything at all. Mundane bits from my personal life, politics, science, fungi, genetics, media, dirty jokes, you name it. You're looking at the inside of my head when you're looking at this blog. Please don't litter and wipe your feet before entering. Thank you.
