There's been yet another exorcism-related death in the US. This time it's in Henderson, Texas where a couple of 18 year old parents beat their 13 month old child to death with a hammer and possibly several other blunt instruments in an attempt to "drive the demons out." Oh, and they bit her at least 20 times, too.
They claim they were trying to drive the demons out of the 13-month-old, but law enforcement officers say the bottom line is a Rusk County couple bludgeoned the little girl to death with a hammer and other objects and bit her more than 20 times in the most grotesque murder the seasoned officers can remember.
Blaine Keith Milam, 19 and Jesseca Bain Carson, 18, both of Henderson, remain jailed on $2 million bonds each. They are charged with capital murder for the Tuesday morning death of Carson's daughter Amora Bain Carson...
"They had multiple stories they went through before they told us they had beaten the child to death," he said. "It is their version of the truth."
Humber said the couple then told deputies the child was possessed and they were trying to rid her of demons.
An arrest affidavit states Milam performed an exorcism of the demons possessing their child. The affidavit continues to state after Milam killed the child with Carson looking on the couple "drove to Henderson to pawn some items to pay for an exorcism."
Officials said Milam and Carson told detectives they decided to hire a priest after the exorcism went badly...
Milam also has a previous criminal record of assault on a child and domestic violence.
This is no different from the kindoki mass panic going on in Africa. It's not even that uncommon that forceful exorcisms occur in Texas, a state whose Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that churches can't be sued for conducting these barbaric rituals. How many more children are going to die as the result of a parent believing in demonic possession? Children are being beaten to death, strangled, and stabbed. Rather than try to stop it, organized churches — the Catholic church in particular, but by no means only the Catholic church — continue to propagate the superstitious belief in evil spirits, adding only the caveat that only their clergymen are qualified to perform the gibberish rites to remove the nonexistent spirits.
Until religious officials stand up and admit that all their bullshit about possession and demons is exactly that, this is going to keep on happening. It will happen again and again and again so long as Evangelicals put forth their deliverance ministries and the Vatican trains exorcists and religions keep telling people that they can be possessed.
It's a lie. It's a fairy tale. It's fraud. Every pastor, every priest, every one of them, is complicit in these deaths. If not for them, the very circumstances that fosters this insanity would ultimately cease to exist. That should have happened centuries ago.
Romania has decided to duck behind an Iron Age curtain. The nation's schools have stopped teaching evolutionary biology and instead requires students to attend compulsory religious instruction classes. Previously, students were taught about evolution at age 18 or 19, in itself an entirely inadequate requirement if they are expected to understand biology.
Romania's withdrawal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum could be evidence of a growing conservative tendency in teaching. Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue, distorts children's understanding of how the world came into being.
Meanwhile, religious studies classes continue to tell Romanian children that God made the world in seven days.
The theory of the Origin of Species and the evolution of humans is no longer present in the compulsory curriculum, through a nationwide decision made under the previous Government in 2006. Before the change, Darwin's theory was taught to pupils aged 18 or 19 years old...
Meanwhile, in religious classes, pupils are taught that the world was created in seven days and God made plants on the third day and the sun on the fourth. Textbooks claim the first man was Adam, who was 'made of ground', and that Eve, the first woman, was made from one of her husband's ribs.
"The Romanian state, whether it intends or not, offers pupils a unique perspective on the world, the religious one, without any critical scientific or philosophical offset," argues [Remus Cernea, president of Solidarity for Freedom of Conscience]...
Biology has been cut from two hours to one of teaching per week for the final two years in many high schools...
"Kids find out what really happened from the Discovery channel," she adds. "They don't really believe the world was made in six days. Well, I hope they don't..."
At present, children are taught religious classes from ages seven to 18. This is mostly an Orthodox curriculum. They are also taught that to sleep in on Sunday mornings is bad because children should be going to church.
"It's not being taught about religion and what it means," said one headmistress. If a parent wants their child not to attend the classes, because they are, for example, Jewish, Muslim or agnostic, he or she has to draft a letter to the school. The child then sits in a library or the head teacher's office working on, say, maths or languages.
But there are new proposals to make all religious classes compulsory for the education system, regardless of the parents' wishes. All children who do not want to attend Religion classes would attend a Moral and Religious Education class...
At last, the world has its Creationist, anti-science, anti-intellectual paradise. The "academic freedom" crowd should be most pleased; unfettered by church-state separation, the educational systems of places like Florida, Texas and Kentucky would look quite like that of Romania.
Perhaps the decision by Romania's government to turn that nation into a citadel of the Disenlightenment should be encouraged. American disenlightenment proponents ought to be encouraged to relocate to Romania. Their children could live out their lives there in exactly the sort of place they want the United States to become, an explicitly religious state where no challenges to church-sanctioned theology is allowed, where education is indoctrination, and where knowledge is made subservient to mythology with full governmental support. Don McElroy would surely feel right at home.
Psalm 100:1-3 is very relevant to this discussion:
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all you lands Serve the Lord with gladness, Come before his presence was singing, Know ye that the LORD he is God: It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
(Notice, that this Psalm is address to "all you lands", i.e. all the nations, i.e. all people. This Psalm is not addressed solely to Israel. I don't believe there's a more emphatic, concise statement in the Scriptures than this that refutes the idea of evolution—"and not we ourselves"; and it is written to all people. And what is their response to be? It is to "Know ye that the LORD he is God".)
Also, in Job 38-41 we have an entire speech by God himself, where he articulates the Truth that Naturalism is false and he created all things.
Wouldn't Romania be the perfect place for someone like McElroy? His "intelligent design," a couple of fancy words swapped for Creationism, is perfectly in keeping with the theology that has now fully eclipsed education in that country, and it would certainly be better for America to put that particular Texan in Romania than it would be for Texas to wind up looking just like Romania.
Jesus apparently whispered into the ear of a man in San Antonio, Texas that another driver wasn't driving in a Christian enough manner. It was up to that man, 52 year old Michael Schwab, to carry out divine retribution... using his pick-up truck as an instrument of divine retribution at 100 mph.
...The bizarre incident that shut down southbound U.S. 281 above the Medina River happened about 7:25 a.m.
"He just said God said she wasn't driving right, and she needed to be taken off the road," said Lt. Kyle Coleman of the Bexar County Sheriff's Office.
The driver of the pickup was identified in a Sheriff's Office news release as Michael E. Schwab, 52, of Blooming Grove.
Schwab told first responders at the scene that "the other vehicle was not driving like a Christian and it was Jesus' will for him to punish the car," according to the release.
The 35-year-old woman was driving her sedan north when the pickup struck her vehicle. Schwab told deputies he was driving faster than 100 mph at the time, Coleman said...
The pickup driver did not specify for authorities how the woman was driving poorly. Investigators determined the female driver "had done nothing wrong," according to the release.
It is expected that Schwab will undergo psychological examination to determine whether he is mentally ill for thinking that invisible divinities are telling him what to do. There's no word yet on whether the other several billion people who believe the same thing will face similar investigations.
A Willacy County grand jury indicted several high-profile public officials on Monday including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.
The indictment charges Cheney with illegally profiting, by virtue of his office, from $85 million in investments in the Vanguard Group. The group invests in companies that house federal detainees. He also is charged with exerting pressure on how much prisons are paid to house detainees.
For now, Cheney's office did not comment. "I haven't seen the indictment," Cheney's spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said Tuesday, indicating that it would be reviewed.
The indictment further alleges that Gonzales used his position to stop investigations into assaults committed in the private prison managed by the GEO Group in Willacy County.
The GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp., was also indicted on murder charges involving the 2001 death of an inmate killed in a Raymondville prison. The indictment accuses GEO of allowing inmates to beat Gregorio De La Rosa Jr., 33, of Laredo, to death with padlocks stuffed into socks...
No! Say it ain't so! Dick Cheney profiting from inhumanity? Alberto Gonzalez tied to torture? This is America. That kind of thing doesn't happen here. Oh, sure, maybe it happens in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Cuba, and maybe the occasional suspect is extraordinarily rendered to a secret prison or two somewhere in Eastern Europe to undergo procedures that are illegal on US soil, but it couldn't happen here.
Will this go anywhere? Will we ever see a Cheney perp walk? I doubt it. He'd have to be dug out of his undisclosed location first, and those sent to retrieve him would have to take care not to wind up being shot in the face. Still, it's fun to think about.
With all of the joyful noise following the last Presidential election,it's sad to have to be reminded that there's still an old sickness in our cultural body that is yet to be cured. Still, it doesn't come as a surprise. Months before the election, the purveyors of hatred were already making their voices heard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threats have kept on coming and have gone beyond words to action in some cases. Now that America will have its first president whose skin isn't pinky-beige, whose hair looks a bit different than the Caucasian type, whose father was an African, the venom is ratcheting up.
...Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door...
Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that nigger in the head..."
At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted
Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur...
Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported...
Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
In Forest Hills, PA, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
It would be naive to even ask why this is happening. We all know why. The pathology has been around long enough. One might as well ask what causes the common cold or why the sky is blue. There are people in this country who, having accomplished nothing with their own lives, identify their own value — and by extension the value of other human beings — by some easily distinguishable physical trait, some bit of superficial biological coincidence. It's all they've got, and they'll cling to it for all they're worth because it is all they're worth. Call that bit of inconsequential physicality into question and you call their value as a human being into question. You make an enemy who may well take it upon himself to extract vengeance.
That someone who looks different, who doesn't share some valued hue of the flesh with such people, has achieved the nation's highest political office drives such people into a rage. Some meaningful privilege that they'd hoped and believed was connected with their appearance has turned out not to be so connected. It is for this reason that I expect at least one assassination attempt to be made upon Obama. It's a pathetic expectation, I know, but it would be just as naive not to think such an event will come as it is to question the motivation for it in the first place.
Following up the case of Laura Schubert, the former Texas woman who was subjected to an involuntary exorcism by a fundamentalist church, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reports that the Schubert family is going to attempt a hearing before the Supreme Court:
...The 1996 episode left her physically and emotionally scarred, and "this stuff is still hard to talk about," Pearson told the Star-Telegram after the Texas Supreme Court dismissed her lawsuit against the church June 27. The majority said the courts can't get involved in a religious debate over church doctrine...
After the exorcism, she dropped out of high school her senior year, began to cut herself as many as 100 times over several years, and refused to leave the house. Pearson slit her wrists with a box cutter.
Her father, a former missionary and minister, became an agnostic.
But Pearson and her parents, Tom and Judy Schubert, say they are willing to go to the U.S. Supreme Court in their fight against a church they once loved.
As the parents see it, Pleasant Glade members abused their daughter in the same way a husband or a boyfriend abuses a wife or a girlfriend — and all under the guise of serving the Lord...
Too bad her father wasn't agnostic before a bunch of superstitious yahoos forcibly attempted to drive boogeymen out of his daughter's body. Lawsuit or not, this kind of lunacy never has to happen to anyone. Laura Schubert's own recounting of how events unfolded goes into more detail about just how superstitious and how irrational the members of this church became than did the article linked here last month:
...Pearson and her brother, Joseph, had been left with their older sister, Amy, while their parents went on a fundraising trip in Indiana. She was going to hang out with the church youth group and work at her part-time job. On June 7, a Friday, Pearson went to the church to help the youth group prepare for a garage sale. At about midnight, one of the teens rushed in saying he had seen a demon in the darkened sanctuary.
Rod Linzay, the youth pastor, urged everyone to anoint the sanctuary with holy oil. They rapped on pews. They prayed. They propped a cross against the doors to keep demons out or drive them out. They were up until early morning.
"I had been around [the church] all of my life, but I had not experienced anything of this sort. . . . After being up all of those hours and involved in all of that, it was easy to believe what was going on was real," she said.
Exhausted, Pearson went home and then to work but was unable to sleep that night. By the time she returned to the church on Sunday evening, she had been up for 72 hours.
It was then that people believed demons had possessed her and the first exorcism was performed. Pearson said she collapsed on the floor out of exhaustion. During the trial, doctors suggested she was hypoglycemic. She clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, made guttural sounds, cried and yelled.
"I was moving my head back and forth, and I hear people saying things are wrong with me and the youth pastor's wife saying it was the demons," Pearson said. They held her down, but after the thrashing stopped, Pearson was allowed to get up after saying the name Jesus.
On Wednesday, Pearson returned to the church. After hearing a sermon about "putting on the whole armor of God to fight off the devil," Pearson said she went off to a corner, curled into a fetal position and prayed.
When another youth asked to pray for her, Pearson refused. Eventually, she was held spread-eagle on the floor. She fought those holding her and asked to be let go. They said "it was the devil talking," Pearson said.
McCutchen then entered the room. He tried to calm Pearson and told her to "just say the word Jesus." Eventually, he called Pearson's parents, who came and took their "dazed" daughter home. Later they saw the bruises and carpet burns. Soon she began having nightmares about hands and faces coming out of her bedroom walls to grab her...
I don't fully understand why she went back to the church, although the fact that her parents had initially left her in that organization's care and that she had been brought up to believe in this stuff to begin with might have a good deal to do with it.
The idea that some teenager's panicked assertion that he'd seen a demon in the place could touch off this kind of sorcerous nonsense — splashing magical oil about and rapping on wooden benches to drive away evil spirits — indicates to me a level of sheer foolishness and ignorance that I wish I couldn't believe was still with us in 21st century America. These people shouldn't be role models held up for praise of their values, they should be laughed at as backwards relics of a time when fear born of the shadows from mankind's childhood hadn't yet given way to the daylight of reason. That this moldering mind-junk, this kind of superstition-fueled melodrama, is repeated every day all over the country, that it's broadcast on television (ever seen Rod Parsley? I watched some of that last week), should be seen as a disgrace to a nation that once led the world in scientific progress — and now is losing that edge. Could there be a connection between this latest superstitious revival and America beginning to lose its edge in scientific and technical leadership? Ya think?
At least one person has learned the correct lesson from what happened to Laura Schubert, though:
[Laura's father, Tom] Schubert has lost his faith, while his wife and daughter continue to believe.
"I do not hold the religious views I once held," Schubert said. "I don't know what is out there. I don't think what is out there is what I thought was there in the past. . . . I don't believe in demons and such. . . . I doubt that God exists."
Good morning and welcome to rationality, Tom Schubert. I hope the rest of your family — and the rest of mankind — catch up with you very, very soon.
There is simply no justification at all for there to be exorcisms. There are no evil spirits to be cast out, no boogeymen hiding under our beds, no monsters in the closets (unless you count Fred Phelps), no ghosts, no vampires, no djinni, no mermaids. If an adult were to tell us of his fervent belief in unicorns, we would think him strange. For some reason, though, there are still people who are commended for their belief in maleficent spooks that can leap in and out of bodies and can be removed by old men chanting in dead or invented tongues while sprinkling water imbued with magical essences about the room. There are people who believe more that they can keep said spirits out of a room by propping a crucifix against a door more than they believe the word of a woman who tells them to leave her alone, that she's not under the command of some infernal, goat-headed hobgoblin dreamed up by some agrarian imbiber of suspect grain products a millennium prior. This is not how adults comport themselves. Even most children know better.
Christina Comer, who for almost a decade was the State Science Curriculum Director for Texas' public education system, is suing the state's Education Agency. Comer was expelled from her position for forwarding an email to her colleagues that announced a presentation critical of Neo-Creationism (AKA Intelligent Design).
...Christina Comer, who lost her job at the TEA last year, said in a suit filed in federal court in Austin that she was terminated for contravening an unconstitutional policy at the agency that required employees to be neutral on the subject of creationism – the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans...
"The agency's 'neutrality' policy has the purpose or effect of endorsing religion, and thus violates the Establishment Clause," the lawsuit said.
Ms. Comer also said in her complaint that she was fired without due process after serving as the state science director for nearly 10 years.
Her lawsuit seeks a court order overturning the TEA's neutrality policy on teaching of creationism and declaring that her dismissal was unconstitutional. The suit also seeks her reinstatement to her old job...
Today certainly seems to be Texas Day at Hyphoid Logic, but I just can't help myself. I started the day off writing about exorcisms in the state, so why not start the evening off with a Daily Jesus from the Lone Star State?
Workers at a marble company in Dallas say they have a slab of natural granite that has the image of Jesus in it.
Verona Marble Company Inc. takes pictures of every slab of stone in their inventory and posts them on their website. Wednesday, the owners say a customer in West Texas spotted the image among dozens of pictures and called to tell them about it.
Those who look at the 6x10 foot slab say they can see the head and arms of Jesus, along with either a belt, sword or glowing book...
To me, that looks like the nozzle from a gas pump in his hand, not a sword or a book.
Hey, waitaminnit... do you think this is a sign that Jesus is at last acknowledging the deific superiority of Norman Fell? Has he finally taken the step that is new?
Yes, I think so. The Holy Ghost of Norman Fell is so great, so very very huge, that it wasn't enough that he drove our price for gasoline over $4.00 per gallon. Even Christ is now feeling Fell's Divine Pain at the Pump. It's so bad that he has to get stoned before he fills up!
Texas is one of those states where Bronze Age thought seems to permeate much of society, hence I write about it a lot and not often anything positive.
On the other hand, I've just found out about something happening in Texas that, in light of all the bad stuff, I thought should get a plug. That would be the Texas Freethought Convention.
The convention will be held on October 26, 2008 in Austin. Austin is a bit different from most of the state, but it's still part of it. I can't make it myself. Being a poor graduate student my travel budget is very limited and between the Mycological Society of America meeting in August and a collection expedition in September I'm afraid that budget is already spoken for.
If you can make it there, however, please do. Freethinking Texans can use all the help they can get!
In 2002, the family of Laura Schubert sued the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church for an incident that occurred in 1996. The church's staff had decided based upon the accusation of one of its younger members that Schubert was possessed by a demon that he'd seen. They forcibly held her down and performed an exorcism on her against her will. She was injured both physically and emotionally and her family won the suit. The church appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
Yesterday, the court reversed Schubert's award in a 6-3 decision, ruling that church's can't be sued for performing exorcisms — even when they do so without the consent of the person being exorcized. Even if that person is injured. Churches can now perform these archaic, bizarre rituals without any concern for the well-being of their victims, because the state's Supreme Court has effectively ruled that a church's freedom of religion trumps an individuals protection against false imprisonment. According to this ruling, a church could feasibly hold a person against their will for as long as it deemed necessary, physically restrain them in any way they thought appropriate, withhold food and water, and do whatever they believed necessary to drive imaginary boogeymen from real flesh-and-blood.
A divided Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former Colleyville church Friday, saying church members who were involved in a traumatic exorcism that ultimately injured a young woman are protected by the First Amendment.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God staff's efforts to cast out demons from Laura Schubert presents an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct that would unconstitutionally entangle the court in church doctrine.
Schubert described a wild night in 1996 that involved casting out demons from the church and two attempts to exorcise demons from her. The incident left Schubert physically bruised and so emotionally scarred she later tried to commit suicide. She was 17 at the time.
Justice David Medina, writing for the majority, said that while Schubert's argument regarding physical injuries might be tried without mentioning religion, her case was mostly about her emotional or psychological injuries from a religious activity that was sanctioned by the church.
For the court to impose any legal liability for engaging in a religious activity "to which the church members adhere would have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect' by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs," Medina wrote.
"Religious practices that might offend the rights or sensibilities of a non-believer outside the church are entitled to greater latitude when applied to an adherent within the church," Medina wrote.
He went on to say that when claims involve "only intangible, emotional damages allegedly caused by sincerely held religious belief, courts must carefully scrutinize the circumstances so as not to become entangled in a religious dispute."
Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, in a stinging dissenting opinion, wrote that the majority opinion is at times "imprecise and overbroad" and imposes an "erroneous standard" that would allow a church to simply claim a "religious motive" to avoid being sued.
He wrote that this "sweeping immunity" is inconsistent with U.S. Supreme Court precedent and that the First Amendment "guards religious liberty; it does not sanction intentional abuse in religion's name."
"This overly broad holding not only conflicts with well-settled legal and constitutional principles, it will also prove to be dangerous in practice," Jefferson wrote.
"Texas courts have been and will continue to be confronted with cases in which a congregant suffers physical or psychological injury as a result of violent or unlawful, but religiously sanctioned, acts," he wrote...
Schubert's account of what happened over several days at the Pleasant Glade church in June 1996 is harrowing.
Schubert and her brother were involved with church activities while their parents were out of town.
On Friday evening, during preparations for a youth group garage sale, the atmosphere became "spiritually charged" when another youth said he saw a demon.
Under direction of the youth minister, the youth frantically anointed everything in the church with holy oil until, at 4:30 a.m. Saturday, the minister told the exhausted youth that they had finally been successful.
At the Sunday evening worship services, Schubert collapsed. Church members "laid hands" on her and forcibly held her arms crossed over her chest, despite her demands to be set free.
She reportedly cried, yelled, kicked, sweated and hallucinated while also making guttural noises.
She was released after she calmed down and replied with requests to say the name Jesus.
The following Wednesday, during a weekly youth service, Schubert reportedly began to act in the same manner. She curled into a fetal position and asked to be left alone. Church members thought she was in distress and held her down in a "spread eagle" position with youth members holding down her arms and legs.
During the incident, she suffered carpet burns, a scrape on her back and bruises on her wrists.
Her father, Tom Schubert, himself an Assembly of God pastor and missionary, questioned what happened at the church.
His daughter experienced angry outbursts, weight loss and self-mutilation and eventually dropped out of high school her senior year. She was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder...
A jury found the church and its members liable and awarded Schubert $300,000 for mental anguish, but the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth cut $122,000 from the verdict for loss of future income.
In the church's appeal to the state Supreme Court, it raised the question of whether the Fort Worth appeals court erred when it said Pleasant Glades' First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion do not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by a "hyper spiritualistic environment."
Justice Medina said that the court does not mean to imply that "under the cloak of religion, persons may, with impunity," commit intentional wrong, such as sexual assault or a minister having an affair with someone in marriage counseling, and get away with it.
"Freedom to believe may be absolute, but freedom of conduct is not, and 'conduct even under a religious guise remains subject to regulation for public safety,' " Medina wrote.
Pruessner, the church's attorney, agreed, saying that church members were simply trying to help Schubert and that there wasn't any evil intent.
"This was clearly a religious controversy, and I don't see how anyone can argue that they were seizing on religion as a get-out-of-jail-free card," Pruessner said. "I disagree vehemently with the spiritual beliefs of the church and how they handled it; it doesn't mean they are legally liable..."
Somebody needs to screen Justice David Medina for possible use of crack, because it's more than a little opaque as to how he thinks that churches are still regulated for public safety if someone can be held against their will and physically abused as was Schubert. AT what point does the supposed regulation kick in? A 17 year old was held against her will, restrained and injured; apparently that's not enough in Texas. Would it have been enough if Laura Schubert's bones had been broken? If she'd been pressed beneath stones? If she'd been hung by the neck until dead? What happened to Schubert is alarmingly reminiscent of the Salem Witch Trials of the late 17th century.
Look where Goodwife Cloyce sits on the beam suckling her yellow bird between her fingers!
— Ann Putnam, 1692
The First Amendment says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In Texas, that now means that as long as some bunch of demon-haunted yahoos claims religious motivations for their actions, they can get away with anything they deem appropriate as a response to one of their own pointing a finger at someone and shouting "Witch!" I suppose that the Texan Supreme Court will next be taking up the thorny legal issue of whether angry mobs have the right to bear torches and pitchforks.
Perhaps if Sergio Aguiar had driven to Coleyville, Texas instead of Turlock, California before smashing his son to a pulp against the asphalt he'd be alive and free today. Anything to get those pesky demons out.
Today's New York Times carries an article by Laura Beil that's fairly unremarkable in most ways to those of use who follow the fundamentalist war against science education in America. Opponents of Evolution Adopting New Strategy goes over relatively familiar ground, discussing how Creationists have historically shifted strategies in their effort to remove evolutionary biology, that bugaboo that threatens their insecure faith-based worldview, from schools. It discusses the latest such strategy, the "strengths and weaknesses" gambit and points out the difference between religion and science and the profound ignorance that Creationists seek to perpetuate about how science works by way of this strategy.
However, the article also contains some choice quotes from Don McElroy, DDS, the Creationist chair of Texas' state board of education who would appear to have given up breathing oxygen in favor of sucking continuously from the nitrous tanks in his office.
Dr. McLeroy, the board chairman, sees the debate as being between "two systems of science."
"You've got a creationist system and a naturalist system," he said.
Dr. McLeroy believes that Earth's appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. "I believe a lot of incredible things," he said, "The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe."
Everybody has the right to believe in whatever cockamamie stories they want to. Hey, this is America, land of the free and home of the bizarre. However, people who elevate their favorite mythology over reason, logic and centuries of scientific progress have no business in positions wherein they have an impact on the education of our students and thereby do generational damage to the country. I would question the sanity of anyone who believes that a baby poofed the universe into existence. When that person is the chair of a state, or even local, board of education, and makes statements of belief like this, they invite public scrutiny. A public that doesn't find such a belief dangerously out of touch with reality is one that is already in big trouble when it comes to the education of its children.
Beil's article continues:
But Dr. McLeroy says his rejection of evolution — "I just don't think it's true or it's ever happened" — is not based on religious grounds. Courts have clearly ruled that teachings of faith are not allowed in a science classroom, but when he considers the case for evolution, Dr. McLeroy said, "it's just not there."
"My personal religious beliefs are going to make no difference in how well our students are going to learn science," he said.
McElroy thinks there's no evidence for evolution but leaps at the opportunity to advance his notion that a baby from Israel made the planet and everything that lives on it?
Of course, we have here another instance of lying for DA LAWD, because just like everyone else who tries to handwave away evolutionary biology by claiming that there's no evidence for it does so based precisely on their religious belief. That may take two forms — it may be that they know that there is evidence but choose to pretend that it doesn't exist, or their religious bias precludes their ever looking for the evidence in the first place (why search for the answers to questions that you believe you already have, after all?) Either way, people like McElroy are not fit to make decisions about science education, since they're unwilling to consider the possibility that science may discover things that empirically contravene their faith. They can keep having that faith, of course. McElroy has every right to attend the church of his choice, to pass out leaflets in the parking lot of a big box store, or to travel the world as an itinerant preacher of "planet-making baby" hypotheses. For him to say that his position isn't based on his faith, though, tells us a lot about his character, and his unwillingness to accept scientific understanding of the world makes him unfit to have an input into science education for others. If he rejected the scientific knowledge that bacteria caused tooth decay, he'd be unfit to be a dentist as well.
Oh, and one more little gem from the article, which isn't attributed to McElroy:
The word itself is open to broad interpretation. If the teaching of weaknesses is mandated, a textbook might be forced to say that evolution has an "inability to explain the Cambrian Explosion," according to the group Texans for Better Science Education, which questions evolution.
That's a tiring old saw, isn't it? I don't know how many times this has been answered, but the term "explosion" in Cambrian Explosion doesn't mean what Creationists like to portray it meaning. It's not like a literal explosion, just a period during which there was rapid diversification. It was at least 20 million years long, which is only an "explosion" in terms of the rate at which we're used to seeing diversity arise... but it's hardly instantaneous. Evolutionary theory predicts that when environmental niches are available, selection will favor the survival of organisms capable of exploiting those niches. The Cambrian Explosion took place at a period during which there were a huge number of such niches available, so diversifying selection appears inflated relative to what we see later, when most niches were filled and new diversity could only become established in a few cases as previous species occupying those niches became extinct. Before the start of the Cambrian Explosion, there weren't a bunch of species already clogging up the works, so diversification happened faster.
I know that's not nearly as glamorous-sounding as the idea that one day there was a loud bang and there were suddenly Wiwaxia and trilobites splashed liberally about the bottom of the seas. Still, it makes a good deal of sense when looked at in this way rather than making up stories about it as has been done by certain pinheaded Texans. They have to do that, of course, to make it look like they know what they're talking about when they bring up the "weaknesses" they have to invent to support their agenda. They're like evil clones of Blanche DuBois; they've always relied on the gullibility of strangers.
LL frequently amazes me, but she's up to some particularly amazing things lately. It's nice (understatement) having a partner who renews one's faith in humanity, you know? Let me explain.
First off, she's fully engaged with making Worcester a better place in a couple of important ways. She attended a city council panel meeting (something like that; I get lost in hierarchy and bureaucracy with easy) last night and came out of it being offered the opportunity to advise the council on how to reduce Worcester's relatively high infant mortality rate. In particular, we have a lot of women who have settled here from places like Ghana and for some reason about 80% of the city's infant mortality is occurring in the African immigrant community. Overall, Worcester currently has the highest infant mortality rate in Massachusetts. So LL is going to be working with the council to come up with things like outreach programs to figure out how to improve prenatal health. She's not a doctor, but she's a cultural and medical anthropologist and has put a lot of time into studying culture-specific attitudes to women's reproductive health and obstetrics. Hence the "saves Worcester" part of the title of this entry.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot... she's also working with some other people to start a program that will help girls (from economically underserved families, I think) in Worcester learn to work with technology. What I mean by that is they'll be taught things like web designs, applications development, and how to build a computer out of spare parts while blindfolded, which is pretty much how LL does it. Free of charge, of course. Free job skills for life. Come and get 'em.
Am I forgetting anything? Probably. I likely don't even know all the ways she's got in mind to help people around here have better lives.
Next, my desktop computer decided to stop working for awhile today. I guess it just needed a break. She got that working, too, without so much as buying a new part. As far as I can figure out what she did, she blew on the CPU fan and the machine started working again. I think there was a screwdriver involved early in the process, but I don't think it was used for anything more than opening the computer case.
The other big LL news is that she received a letter today confirming that she's becoming a US citizen. She'll be taking the oath sometime at the end of July or beginning of August after she returns from a trip to Lebanon to see her family and take care of a personal matter or two on that side of the planet. Mind you, Homeland Security had to think about whether or not to allow a woman who runs around saving infants and coordinating international efforts to stop female genital mutilation and blowing on computers to magically bring them back from the dead to become a citizen. You'd think that sort of track record would make one an instant citizen, but I guess not holding any Halliburton stock might slow things down just a bit. She gets to vote in the next election, though. Hint: I doubt she'll be voting for the guy who's willing to station US troops in the Middle East for the next thousand years. Just sayin'.
LL is leaving tomorrow to spend a week in Texas with family and they're going on a cruise. I'll be staying here in Worcester; I have beetles to dissect and/or sequence. I can't break away, so I'll be without her company for a couple of weeks in June and then all of July, too.
I just hope nothing goes wrong around here. Who will save us all while LL is out of the country?
Evolution is an election issue, and not just because we care about how our children are educated. In light of the largest mountain of evidence ever gathered on any topic in history, no candidate for president of the world's most powerful nation should be given serious consideration if he or she does not accept evolution as a fact of life.
I disagree with a good deal of what Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution!, says in the rest of his column. I disagree that evolutionary biology "glorifies God" or any such thing. I don't see the role of science as being one to glorify anything at all. Understand, yes, but then only what the evidence actually shows, not what we would like it to show.
Nonetheless, if somebody wants to think that evolution is somehow "glorious," and they don't insist on science education and publication asserting that viewpoint, I don't care. We can talk about it, we can disagree, whatever. As long as we keep the theology out of scientific inquiry, who does whatever else they feel like doing with it is their own business.
I'm not a vegetarian, let alone a PETA activist. I have no problem at all with people who hunt and fish, killing humanely and eating what they take while acting in compliance with wildlife management. That's all fine; I can easily see the value in it. On the other hand, there's this:
A controversy is brewing at Columbus High School over the treatment of a baby raccoon.
“They started stepping and stomping on it, joking they’re tenderizing the animal,” Police Chief Danny Jackson. “They skinned that raccoon, cooked it and ate it..."
It happened during a wildlife management class in which students were encouraged to harvest and prep wildlife to be cooked out back and consumed.
“From what I understand, they bring the animals in dead. But these two didn’t. They brought it in alive,” Jackson said.
Jackson says they then beat the animal to death in front of stunned classmates.
According to the superintendent, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.
He said a substitute teacher was in the class that day and simply didn’t know any better...
But 11 News has learned there will be no criminal charges against the two students involved because most of the witnesses have said the animal died quickly.
“And so the suffering was minimal,” Jackson said...
The substitute teacher didn't know any better than to allow students to beat and stomp an animal to death in the classroom in front of "stunned classmates?" That's an excuse? I hope this idiot's drool-cup didn't overfill too quickly during his stint. How exactly does one not know any better than to allow high school students to stomp a baby animal to death in a classroom?
The suffering was minimal? Yeah, it's hard to see how one could incur less suffering than by stomping an animal into a linoleum floor. One couldn't, say, shoot the poor thing and get it over with before the poor thing knew what was going on. That's why veterinarians routinely beat untreatably sick domestic animals to death with baseball bats when putting them down; the suffering is so much less than giving them a barbiturate injection.
I don't know who these kids parents are or what kind of town this is, but stomping a baby raccoon to death — let alone doing it in front of a bunch of other people while laughing about it — sounds like prosecutable animal cruelty to me. It's too bad we don't get their names; these boys clearly have a bright future ahead of them full of newspaper headlines containing words like "bloody" and "brutal." How will I know it's them when they take their first perp walks on "America's Most Shocking Police Videos?"
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.
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all you lands
