The South Park Paradox: God vs. Santa

A holiday seasoned press release appears in today's endless stream of EurekAlerts. You have to read it all the way to the end to get to the punchline, though. I'll summarize a bit to save time.

Researchers ran across a study about children of ages 7-13's belief in Santa Claus in 1896. That same study was repeated in 1979. The study was conducted again in 2000. The trend found was that more parents thought it a good idea to perpetuate the Santa Claus myth in 2000 than in the previous years. 54% did so in 1896, and that had risen to 80% in the 2000 sudy. Children were more likely to figure out on their own that Santa is fictional in more recent times than they used to be; only 25% of parents finally broke the news of Santa's non-existence to their children in 1896. That number had reached 40% by 1979.

So 75% of 7-13 year olds in 1896, and 60% of those in 1979, figured it out on their own or found out from another child who had somehow learned the truth. The conclusion: kids are pretty good at looking at a story, looking at the real world, and figuring out which one they should believe over the other when the facts don't add up.

The punchline?

...If children attribute the same supernatural powers to Santa as they do to God, why do they stop believing in Santa, but continue their belief in God?

— Source

I don't know if the press release had intended to be funny, but I couldn't help a little chuckle of my own.

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A Question for Atheists: On a Related Note

On a note related to the previous entry about David Klinghoffer, a question by Lee Shelton IV on his blog The Contemporary Calvinist asks:

If only the natural world exists, then how did belief in the supernatural evolve?

I've already given my answer. Won't you please take a moment to give yours?

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Discovery Institute Paranormal Apologetics: Klinghoffer's Baffling Illogic

The Discovery Institute has been for some years now a leading Disenlightenment think-tank. We could point to some rather strange stuff that emanates from its phlogiston-strewn halls well beyond its advocacy of Neo-Creationism. Nonetheless, it's left to David Klinghoffer to thoroughly explain what's at the core of this bizarre institution's ideology, which he does in an opinion piece appearing in today's Los Angeles Times:

Ghosts, aliens and us

By David Klinghoffer

When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons... When I queried the rabbi about this... he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets...

It was a reminder that, as much as we think of our age as cynical and literally disenchanted, supernatural belief has hardly been erased. In fact, it may be on the rise. A CBS poll in October reported that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts (and 22% claim to have seen one). Among those younger than 45, 54% believe, as opposed to 41% over that age. Belief in other forms of paranormal and occult phenomena is on the rise too: In the 1980s, 25% of Americans accepted the idea of alien abductions, for instance, but 40% say they do now, according to Newsweek...

...Sure, I'm skeptical about crop circles, conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. However, I'm also sympathetic to the late conservative philosopher and ghost-story writer Russell Kirk, who valued the paranormal for its suggestion that reality consists of more than mundane material processes. I get the persistent sense that something profound is affirmed by the eerie accounts...

Another possibility is that the human need to believe in the unseen world itself points to, while not proving, the reality of hidden dimensions. It could be that materialism -- the philosophical assumption that reality is nothing but physical stuff -- is a prejudice rather than a fact. Perhaps an unseen reality does exist, revealed in flashes that can be confusing or misleading, to which we sometimes give flaky designations. Like "Bigfoot."

Religions used to confidently navigate this twilight realm. Some faiths still do, quietly...

...As for the rabbi who presided over our twins' bris, the evangelistic branch of Judaism to which he belongs, Chabad, stands out as bucking the trend elsewhere in Judaism toward a pallid rationalism.

The same trend is mirrored in other faiths, especially the shrinking mainline Protestant denominations. It may be that such pallidness helps explain why Americans turn to florid paranormal beliefs, as opposed to traditional supernatural ideas...

Religious leaders representing respectable faiths, intimidated by secular prejudice, may wish to take note as they scan the empty pews. The human hunger for a vigorous, unapologetic interface with the unknown can't be entirely repressed...

In a nutshell (the best way to summarize the assertions of nuts, after all), Klingoffer's argument is that belief in UFOs and bigfoot are erroneous (don't tell Michael Medved!), but they arise because of an absence of the preaching of traditional forms of supernaturalism in religious institutions, and this belief, in turn, is evidence for the existence of the supernatural. This, in turn, indicates that materialism — or, more accurately, naturalism — is incorrect. Where to begin in this chain of fallacies?

I'll start off with Klinghoffer's lumping of bigfoot and UFOs with the supernatural. While these are, indeed, beliefs that something exists in the absence of any evidence that they do, or even can, exist in the real world, they are not themselves beliefs in anything supernatural. The belief that extraterrestrial spacecraft have or do visit our planet is a belief in quite natural, albeit unearthly, things. The aliens in the postulated ships are the products of the same natural forces we find all around us and the ships themselves would work by physical laws. Likewise, bigfoot, were it to exist, would simply be a huge North American ape that ate, breathed and reproduced like every other mammal. No prevalent ideas about bigfoot, as wrong as they might be, offer the conjecture that sasquatches are or do anything supernatural, and while the arguments in favor of their existence are incorrect, they are based precisely on naturalistic sciences like biology and ecology. Klinghoffer is equivocating right from the outset by redefining "supernatural" as meaning any phenomenon for which there is no reputable physical evidence. Given such a redefinition, he can proceed, as he does, to offer the misunderstanding of the physical world as evidence for the existence of a supernatural world or, as he puts it, "unseen dimensions." If one recalls that a common religious definition of "faith" is "belief in things unseen," it becomes immediately clear what he's up to. By doing it, he can assert that ignorance is religion; bigfoot is now an article of faith.

Which goes right to the next fallacy, namely the assertion that popular supernaturalism is the result of some diminishing of religious supernaturalism. This is a rather bizarre contention; all religion is based on belief in the supernatural. That is to say, there can be no religion that doesn't posit the existence of at least one deity which operates in a manner unbound by natural laws. Every religion, no matter how liberal it may be when it comes to social ideas and how rational it is when it comes to empirical reality, is rooted in a deeply held belief that something exists beyond the scope of the senses and beyond the possibility of measurement. Whether we're talking about non-evangelical forms of Judaism or mainline Protestantism, all religions must do this, and none of which I'm aware contend something to the contrary. Moreover, the postulation of supernatural causation to natural phenomenon is not some new thing; it has certainly diminished in modern times, but it just as certainly existed in the past, and that past is filled with any number of strange beliefs about the material world that have nothing to do with religion at all. Not so long ago, the supernaturalistic religious worldview was essentially all that existed, and yet the same people who believed in the religion also believed in ghosts and dragons and wizards. If anything, belief in those things were even more widespread in the past than they are today. When I walk down a city street today, I'm surprised if I see even one amulet hanging in a doorway to ward off the evil eye. If I were taking a walk through a 10^th century village, I'd be equally surprised to see a doorway without one. Religious belief in the supernatural is a factor that makes beliefs in other flavors of magic more palatable, not less. Conversely, the pews of churches and similar structures designated for the worshipful become emptier because the same knowledge that has led much of humanity to dispense with belief in ghosts and warlocks leads to less credulity when it comes to gods and devils. The former pair is far less of a leap, after all, than the latter couple. They were at least of human origin; ghosts used to be people, mages still are, and we know at the very least that people actually exist. There's empirical evidence that tells us at least that much. These other things, though, evaporate utterly when examined from a position of empiricism. It takes less of a leap of faith (and logic) to believe in magic than it does to believe in omnipotence or disembodied malevolence.

Still, all of this is but an appetizer before the main noxious entree, the assertion that any belief in the supernatural provides even a scrap of evidence that an "unseen dimension" exists. Using Klinghoffer's redefinition of "supernatural," this equation works out to the solution that one erroneous idea supports the validity of a different error. If I believe that cats visit the moon while I am asleep then angels are real. If I think that lightning bolts are hurled at the heads of sinners by angered ancestor spirits that live among the clouds then Moses parted the Red Sea. I am not exaggerating about this; Klinghoffer is actually asserting, after all, that belief in bigfoot means that there is a Kingdom of Heaven. It's an absolutely bizarre sort of reasoning, to use that term equivocally myself, but it's exactly what Klinghoffer proposes. Any sort of ignorant faith in things unseen and unevidenced will do for his purposes. This is the biggest and blackest tent of them all, and by accepting such things into it, Klinghoffer reveals to us the basis of all that he advocates as a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute. A statue of him should be erected at the front door of their offices, much like the Statue of Liberty. This statue would similarly hold a torch aloft, though it would have no flame upon it and the inscription upon the monument would read

Give me your ignorant, your superstitious,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe nonsense,
The innumerate refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the credulous, mistaken to me,
I lift my lump beside the night-dark tent flap!

The irony that someone who would himself engage in an archaic ritual in which the genitals of eight day old boys are cut up to mark a covenant with a deity, followed by hanging a magical talisman whose origins he does not know and is incurious enough not to bother investigating, arguing that naturalism is "bias" because it doesn't leave room for ghosts and demons, is rich and thick, indeed. That he accepts the "graceful dodge" of a holy man at its word and then denounces empiricism is laughable. This is the very stuff from which Dark Ages have always been made, no different from the taboos regarding treading in the shadows of ancient Egyptian priests or burning incense for the pleasure of the lares and manes. This is the very meat of the Disenlightenment served upon a darkly glittering platter of intellectual misdirection and garnished lovingly with something scraped from the bottom of a boot that has just come in from the cow pasture. For someone like Klinghoffer, the world can never be demon-haunted enough. Why else hang talismans warding off Lilith around one's home?

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Kindoki: Exorcism and Abuse in Africa, America and the UK

A new vocabulary word for non-African readers today: kindoki. That word embodies the belief now prevalent in many parts of Subsaharan Africa that children are demon-possessed witches. It's a pernicious idea being spread by Pentecostal Christian preachers that is resulting in a crisis for African children who, when accused of kindoki, find themselves abandoned by their families and sent to religious camps to be exorcised. The practices associated with this are horrible and a direct consequence of a religious fervor stoked by the preachers for their own benefit at the expense of children and families in countries like Congo, Angola and Nigeria.

Persecuting the African child

by Olusegun Fakoya, Nigerian Tribune

Africa abounds with various forms of child abuses, arising mostly from prevalent poverty and ignorance. This notwithstanding, the paramount role of the child in the African setting has never been in question. However, the traditional African belief and attitude to children has been successfully fractured by those who have deliberately perverted traditional belief and infused it with a distorted dose of Christianity...

...In the Congo Republic, a surprising number of children are accused of being witches, and thereafter, beaten, abused or abandoned. Child advocates estimate that thousands of children living in the streets of Kinshasa, Congo's capital, have been accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often as a rationale for not having to feed or care for them. There are over 50,000 homeless children on the streets of that lawless city...

...a shockingly high proportion of these children are on the streets because of the mushrooming influence of the new revivalist churches who have comfortably carved a commercial niche for themselves in the business of "child kindoki"... In 2006, Congo's Social Affairs minister, Bernard Ndjunga, estimated that as much as 50,000 children might just be illegally detained by churches specialising in the removal of kindoki...

...Congolese pastors invaded Angola, bringing with them the message of kindoki and further destabilization of an already fractured society. In 2006, it was officially estimated that one northern Angolan town had over 400 abandoned and abused children stigmatised as witches... it was easy for the notion of child witches or kindoki to gain a firm foothold in Angola as in many other African nations, as one of the key African beliefs is that of the potency of witchcraft. It is commonly believed that witches can communicate with the world of the dead or other such supernatural plane, and usurp or "eat" the life force of others, bringing their victims misfortune, illness and death. Adult witches are said to bewitch children by giving them food and then using them to achieve their nefarious goals by bringing misfortunes to their families, causing illness, bad luck and death. In retaliation, gory tales abound of the atrocities committed against children in the fight back against child witches. Two cases were particularly significant. A mother blinded her 14-year- old daughter with bleach in an attempt to rid her of evil visions, while a father injected battery acid into his 12-year- old son's stomach because he feared the boy was a wizard...

One of the notable propagators of kindoki in Congo DR is Prophet Onokoko who as at 1999, had over 230 children on his book, all accused of witchcraft. He employed what he termed "vomit up the devil system" to exorcise children of kindoki. This is the regurgitation of strange objects after these kids have been forcefully made to drink bizarre concoctions. There are other sects involved in these unwholesome practices in Congo, chief amongst which is the Combat Spirituel Church with its headquarters in Kinshasa and numerous branches all over the country and outside, United Kingdom inclusive [NOTE: this same church does have a US branch in North Carolina] ...

...the current situation in Akwa Ibom State and other parts of the Niger Delta remains a shame. For as long as it is allowed to continue, it remains a stigma on Nigeria. For as long as it flourishes without restraint, for so long will it remain a blur on the conscience of the Christian Association of Nigeria and all those who at daggers drawn in defence of the impeccability of modern-day Pentecostalism. For as long as this unchecked instances of child abuse reign in Nigeria, for so long will men and women of good will and clear conscience the world over, continue to confront the problems created by a nation that has allowed its territory to become a nightmare for innocent children...

...The United Kingdom abounds with Nigerian-oriented churches practising the Nigerian version of Pentecostalism with its prejudices and notable flaws. This is said with reference to the unwholesome impact of non-Nigerian sects like that of Pastor Gilbert Deya and so many others from the African continent. In essence, Britain remains like a microcosm of Africa with our blemishes and impurities fully represented. The practice of kindoki is strongly rooted in the Congolese communities in the United Kingdom. Cases abound where parents have attributed ill luck in the UK to kindoki in their children. Often times, such children have been returned to the Congo for exorcism, some not to be seen again...

Governments of the world need to come together in action and in deeds to tackle the menace posed by the phenomenon of kindoki or child witches. Africa as a continent can only become further impoverished by the sustenance of this retrogressive practice. In this age and time, what Africa needs is not the concept of child witches but technological advancement, economic, social and political emancipation. Africa needs enlightenment and not the concept of child witches...

Here in the US, of course, we've already seen one political candidate who almost certainly buys into kindoki and stood on stage with an African religious figure, Thomas Muthee, to get his protection against it:


The ignorance isn't confined to economically and socially struggling African countries; we've got our own child exorcisms in the United States. There's more than enough superstitious, ignorant nonsense to go around and we've certainly got our share here in the states.

...Maxwell, pastor of The Theatre Church, The Sword of the Spirit Christian Church Ministries, a Bible-based ministry, performs what is known in charismatic Christianity as deliverance ministry, in which people are not possessed, but feel they are oppressed, controlled or influenced by evil spirits or forces...

...In more than 40 years of ministry, Maxwell said he has cast evil spirits out of more than 250 people, and many more still seek his help...

Deliverance and exorcisms have seemingly increased during the past 30 years due to the growth of cults, satanic masses and the worship of and interest in witchcraft, said the Rev. John Wassell, a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark. "The lessening of Christian culture and the interest in other spiritual cultures have increased these problems," Wassell said. In the Catholic Church, deliverance ministries are also offered. "The church does everything to rule out possible psychological problems," the priest noted...

— Source: Dealing with Demons, The Montclair (New Jersey) Times, Nov. 13, 2008

Kindoki is kindoki is kindoki, and whether we call the reaction to it exorcism or deliverance ministry makes no difference. That there still exist institutions that teach true-believers that evil spirits are real, that they somehow take control of and manipulate real people, and that only supernatural means can combat them is the point. It's tempting to look at what's happening in Africa and say to ourselves something about those backwards people way over on the other side of the world, but what then do we say about people like Sarah Palin and Elbert Maxwell and John Wassell, not to mention the millions upon millions of Americans who believe in this stuff?

We should make no room in this world for this fear. All people are entitled to live their lives with a degree of knowledge sufficient to understand that there are no evil spirits and, for that matter, no spirits at all except in the metaphorical sense. All the evil in the world is done by human beings to human beings at their own discretion, not because some devil is whispering into their ears or guiding their hands. Until we arrive at that point, there will always be periods of history in which the belief in superstition eclipses reason to the extent that what amounts to torture, slavery and murder seem justified as means of combating the forces of darkness and so become the real forces of darkness, all-too-real evils that afflict nations from India to the UK to Nigeria to America.

Every time a purveyor of satanic hocus-pocus takes a stage, any stage at all, he or she should be shouted down in derision. We have got to cast off these fictions, whether they are espoused by a candidate for political office, a Catholic church official or an African Pentecostal child abuser. These beliefs are due no respect. They're poison and should be treated like toxic waste left over from a dark age — because that's all they are.

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Romania Drops Evolution from Education, Substitutes Religion

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 removes theory of evolution from school curriculum

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.

— Source: Intelligent Design 2^nd Session, Don McElroy, February 6, 2005

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.

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Cincinnati Zoo Calls Off Creationist Theme Park Joint Promotion

This morning, I mentioned a joint marketing promotion involving the Cincinnati Zoo and the Creationist Theme Park as one of the things that had me feeling down. This evening, I feel a little better because the promotion has been terminated before it even began.

Zoo pulls Creation Museum promotion

by Dan Horn

A promotional deal between the Cincinnati Zoo and the Creation Museum was scuttled today after the zoo received dozens of angry calls and emails about the partnership...

The deal appeared on web sites for both institutions Friday, but it was pulled by the zoo Monday morning after complaints about the partnership started pouring in.

Most of the protests echoed the same theme: the Creation Museum promotes a religious point of view that conflicts with the zoo's scientific mission. The museum promotes a strict interpretation of the biblical version of how life began, and it suggests that dinosaurs and man once lived side by side...

Kudos to everyone who took the time to call and/or email the zoo and express their concerns and upset. Anything that even remotely hints at legitimacy for the purveyors of animatronic religious mythology over evolutionary biology needs to be addressed by those concerned with the preservation of good science and sound reason.

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Corrosion of the Enlightenment: One of Those Depressing Mornings

The Cincinnati Zoo is shilling for the Creation Museum Theme Park.

The Fundamentalist Faction within the US military is teaching soldiers, among other bizarre claims, that evolutionary biology leads to suicide, that Humanism is based on selfishness, and that Charles Darwin was the first leader of the Soviet Union. It's gibbering, drooling, Disenlightenment mental illness, and it's on the taxpayer's bill. The message is being delivered in mandatory indoctrination sessions, no less.

Even the erstwhile ScienceBlogs have been infected with anti-vaccinationist, anti-science nonsense. The source of the sickness in this case is Germany, and the anti-vaccinationist is joined by a second nutcase who insists that the heavy metals found in Ayurvedic woo-juice aren't harmful. This despite a recent investigation that noted numerous cased of lead and mercury poisoning tied to those same compounds.

Hyphal tips to The Austringer, Daily Kos and Respectful Insolence, respectively, for the heads-up on these three sad stories.

There are some mornings when the news from the front in the war against ignorance and disenlightenment are so depressing that I barely feel that it's worth my time to go into the lab. Heck, it's almost not worth my time to get out of bed. It seems that no matter what, the cancer is just going to keep on spreading. Just when things seem to be getting better, just when it looks like some progress is being made, the legions of lesions turn up somewhere else. That the forces of idiocy should find a home in ScienceBlogs, that institutions like the Cincinnati Zoo and the US military should be creating opportunities for the further corrosion of reason in favor of superstition and misinformation, are truly grievous situations.

It seems that not only sound, evidence-based science can be readily overturned by the machinations of mythologists, but even Constitutional law can be ignored with impunity.

On some days, that makes me want to stand up and push back hard. It's one of the reasons I decided to become a dues-paying member of Greater Worcester Humanists. It's one of the reasons that I want to teach sound science and engage in useful and revealing research.

On other days, though, the bad news seems so overwhelming that I just want to hibernate like a bear. It's tempting to get back into bed, leave a wake-up call for the time when knowledge is valued over blindly clinging to the ancient misunderstandings, and pull the covers over my head. It makes me want to have scotch for breakfast.

The latter is not an option, of course. I have primers to design, a report for the state DCR to complete (hopefully by the end of the week), phylogenies to infer. Until shariah is instituted in Massachusetts, I have work to do. Besides, we have 200 proof ethanol in the lab. That's even better than scotch... right?

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Christ Tells Texas Man to Punish Other Drivers

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.

'God said she needed to be taken off road'

...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.

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Mumbai Mujahedin: Terror, Mass Murder and "Blasphemy" Resolutions

Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.

I wonder if the 85 members of the UN General Assembly who voted on November 25 in favor of the anti-blasphemy resolution from whence those words came are feeling any sense of irony today, the day after an undetermined number of terrorists sormed into the Indian city of Mumbai and turned it into a war zone and killing ground. At last count, at least 125 people have died, 325 have been injured, and hostages are still being held by a group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedin.

Indian military commandos continued to exchange fire with an unknown number of militants one day after coordinated groups of gunmen shot and blasted their way through tourist sites around Mumbai on Wednesday night, apparently targeting American, Israeli and British citizens for use as hostages...

One hostage, a Polish national, said he was very happy to be free and praised the Indian military commandos. Moments later, a man identified as being of Lebanese descent was carried out with two other people, too weary to address the throng of reporters.

Most of Mumbai remained in shock today. In many neighborhoods, 80% of the businesses remained closed as police warned residents to stay at home, where many followed the unfolding drama on television.

A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahedin said it carried out the attack.

We will, no doubt, get some perfunctory denunciations from countries like Saudi Arabia that will tell us all about how these new mujahedin aren't really Muslims. The "no true Scotsman" argument is used so frequently by religious fundamentalists that its faux kilt is in dire need of patching from all the wear. They're not really Muslims in the same way that Ted Haggard isn't really Christian. When the true-believers go astray and start blowing up innocent people or molesting a few children or having sex-for-money, it's so easy to disavow them, isn't it?

In light of the UN General Assembly resolution, we're certain to be told that these mass murderers have no association with Islam. They're actually... what? Martians? Mutant ninja turtles? No, they're mujahedin. They're Muslim fundamentalist holy warriors, and their holy war means blowing up bombs and shooting up hotels and train stations. This is religion once again bringing people together... in morgues.

Although Mumbai has been the scene of several terrorist attacks in recent years, experts said Wednesday's assaults required a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning. The scale and synchronization of the attacks pointed to the likely involvement of experienced commanders, some said, suggesting possible foreign involvement.

The terrorists struck almost simultaneously at the city's domestic airport and a railway station and sprayed gunfire at the Leopold Cafe, a restaurant popular with foreigners. As many as 16 groups hit nine sites on the southern flank of this crowded metropolis of 19 million...

Nobody knew, right? This is probably the biggest, most coordinated attack by holy warriors since the Afghan mujahedin were fighting the Soviets a quarter century ago... but nobody knew. No mullahs, no community leaders, nobody. No true Muslims were even complicit in this attack. Amazing. After all,

Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.

And how beautiful is this holy war that has been brought against the citizens and workers of Mumbai:

...Wednesday's attacks were a brazen frontal assault using automatic weapons.

The targets included police headquarters in south Mumbai, where some officers were pinned down by gunfire.

The victims included Mumbai's anti-terrorism chief, Hemant Karkare, and two of his senior police officers, which complicated the law enforcement response to the attacks. Television video showed Karkare donning a flak jacket and helmet minutes before heading into one of the hotels.

Witnesses said the attackers appeared to fire at random and made no effort to hide their identities, which, experts suggested, signaled a readiness to die...

How glorious. How noble. This is the will of God in action, is it not, that mujahedin should take up arms and fire randomly at human beings as they go about their daily business.

Across India, more than 3,600 people have been killed in terrorist incidents since January 2004, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, many involving sectarian disputes...

None of them were killed by Muslim extremists, though, because Islam is wrongly associated with terrorism, just like Catholic priests have been wrongly associated with pederasty. Religious people just don't do this sort of thing.

Aren't we sick of this yet? I'm not talking about Americans or Indians, and I'm not talking about atheists or religious believers. I'm talking about human beings.

Look, I'll be honest. I honestly have no use for religion in my life. I think its widest role in modern civilization is divide people and to hold back the progress of reason in our world. There are plenty of people out there who disagree with me on these points, and that's fine. I don't want to blow any of you up, and I have enough faith in the vast majority of my species to believe that the feeling is mutual.

Still, isn't it about time to confront the fact that much of the violence of the kind that we're seeing in Mumbai, that has been see in India so frequently in recent years, that has happened in the US in places like New York and Oklahoma City, that took place in Guyana 30 years ago, that all of this is tied to religious belief and is justified in the name of doing the work of some deity or another? It's not my place to drum these strains of violence out of religion. People like me are more inclined to chuck the whole thing out and rely on empiricism and empathy, not on allegedly divine laws. It's the place of those within religion to make the changes, if they can be made at all, that will insure that things like what is happening even now in Mumbai never, ever happen again. That can only start when religious moderates come to understand that there is something present in their religion as it is understood by all too many people that calls for war, whether it's a shooting war in India or a culture war in America. When you call for war, you'll find volunteers to carry it out sooner or later.

In Mumbai, those volunteers call themselves the Deccan Mujahedin today. They are terrorists associated with Islam.

The UN General Assembly should spit that stupid anti-blasphemy resolution out like the mouthful of garbage it is and instead start looking into why Islam — and Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, all of these religions — sooner or later foster the birth of monsters.

The blood of the thousands, the millions, of the victims of dehumanized mujahedin calls out for this. Will it ever get done, or will there be another hundred Mumbai Novembers, 9/11's, Tamil Tiger suicide bombings, holy war without end?

Enough. Enough, enough, enough.

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A Few Irreligious Thoughts to Ponder

You've probably heard by now about a certain presumptuous jackass of a columnist named Jim Griffith who writes for the Newnan, Georgia Times-Herald. Griffith has achieved 15 minutes of Internet infamy by penning a column entitled "A few religious thoughts to ponder." In it, he explains how terrible Thanksgiving is for atheists:

Thanksgiving must be a terrible time for atheists. They have no God to thank.

They do not have the privilege of gathering with family and friends to express gratitude by saying: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." An atheist on his deathbed faces serious uncertainties. Gazing upward, he pleads: "Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul -- if I have one."

The column was found out and replied to by a series of atheists objecting to such nonsense and, after less than two days, the newspaper saw fit to close the comments so that no more respondents could rake Griffith over the coals for being, as I said, a presumptuous jackass. I've checked other items in the newspaper, including other columns by Griffith, and none of them have had their comments closed after many days or weeks. Just this one. Apparently, the Newnan Times-Herald didn't want too many atheists to have the chance to debunk Griffith's garbage by mentioning how they celebrate Thanksgiving — at least not in a forum that locals were likely to see. It just won't do for a newspaper to report inadvertently that atheists celebrate the holiday in much the same way that non-atheists do and that the atheists are, after all, human beings with families, affections and gratitude. At least, it won't do for the small-time newspaper to reveal these truths to the residents of Newnan, GA.

As a result, those of us who didn't have the chance to respond to Jim Griffith's "few thoughts," which I suspect are a very few, at the paper's website during the 36 hours in which the opportunity to do so was available will have to do it elsewhere. I'll do it here.

I have a lot of things for which to be thankful this year, and not a single iota of it requires or has anything to do with any deities whatsoever.

Like many people across America, regardless of their beliefs, I will be joining my family to celebrate the holiday. LL and I will be leaving within the next couple of hours to head to north central Pennsylvania, just as we did last year. You may not see it readily, but there's a lot of gratitude embodied in that last sentence.

First off, I'm thankful for having gotten through another year during which a blindly religious president mismanaged the country in which I live into numerous hardships. I survived that year despite the existence of religious radicals in other countries who would like to see people like me dead... and when I say "people like me," I mean Americans. They want to inflict pain upon us because their religious fundamentalism calls for violence against people with whom they disagree. I'm thankful that this faith-stuffed anti-intellectual will soon be a former president and that his replacement might actually turn out to be a person of intelligence and ability who could wind up improving things, even if only a little. 2008 hasn't been a very good year for my country and I'm glad it's almost over. I'm thankful to the 7,000,000 people, too, who may well have changed the course of history during the last election. We shall see what really happens in the months and years ahead, but I'm thankful for at least having the hope that it won't be the same as what's gone before.

I'm thankful that I'm getting to spend another Thanksgiving with my sister, niece and brother-in-law. My sister and I had no contact at all for more than a decade, and this was in no small part due to religious belief. My parents found much to hate about the world and about differences of opinion and about people who are different from them thanks to their faith, you see, and they disowned first me in part because of that faith. They told my sister that I was a drug addict, that I was in jail and probably dead, to make as sure as they could that she wouldn't try to find me. When I finally tracked her down, I learned that she had been similarly disowned for the grievous sin of falling in love with someone of a different faith than that of our parents — even though neither my sister nor he practiced any religion at all. When they got married, nobody from my family came to the wedding other than myself. I gave the bride away. Tomorrow, we'll celebrate Thanksgiving together, along with my rather precocious niece and the rest of our non-traditional clan, none of whom are particularly religious and several of whom are outright non-believers. How could I not be grateful for this? The only involvement of a deity here, at least the imagining of one, was to drive people apart.

LL is coming with me, of course. This year, we celebrated our twelfth anniversary together. LL comes from a country in which religious differences led to a generation-long civil war in which members of her family and friends of her family died in terrible and inhumane ways. Her cousin, for example, was detained by a Syrian-backed militia, hauled away to Syria, and tortured for years. She spent long stretches of time huddled with her family in an underground parking garage hoping to avoid being shot or blown up by Syrians and Israelis and their proxies — all on the basis of ancient religious divisions. Survive it she did, though, and this year she became a US citizen and voted in an election for the first time in her entire life. I am thankful that LL is here with me, relatively safe and about to enjoy the holiday. I'm thankful that she survived a long and terrible war, that she made it to the US, and that she's stuck by me all these years, through the best of times and the not-so-good.

I'm thankful to the university I attend and to the people there who give of their time and knowledge as I grind away at earning a graduate degree. There was a time in my life, not so long ago, during which I never thought that I could get this far. I worked hard and here I am, but the opportunity had to be offered by others, too. I have that opportunity and am grateful for it.

I'm thankful that Tycho, a lizard who has practically been family, has survived another year, despite last year's unwarranted death sentence. He's sitting near my shoulder as I write this, probably wondering when breakfast is coming. Alas, the weather is too cold for Tycho to make the trip to Pennsylvania with us this year. He's going to be rather bored with no humans to entertain him for the four days we'll be gone. Tycho has worked out a lot of things in his long lizard lifetime, but how to work the TV remote isn't one of them. I expect that he'll spend much of his time asleep. In any case, he's exceeded the average lifetime of a member of his species in captivity by nearly a third now and is still in good health. Thank you, Tycho, for sticking around for so long. There will be lobster roaches and macaroni and cheese when we return. I suppose someone could argue that some deity is allowing Tycho to go on living. You know, Lizard-Jesus or HerpAllah or something. That would be a very childish person, but I'm sure someone who will read this will have the thought cross their mind.

Which brings me to another bunch for which I'm thankful, and that is the many people who have fought and are still fighting to reverse the ever-threatening flood of irrationality that might otherwise engulf us all and snuff out the light of the Enlightenment. They keep us progressing, sometimes at great cost. They're the ones who hope to remove the motivations for these religious wars and faith-based familial decay, who object to and dissect and defeat all the magical thinking that is only a hair's breadth away from complete ascendancy at times. I'm grateful to the teachers, the scientists, the historians, the living human memory-banks who remember the past and dedicate themselves to our not repeating it.

There is more — much more — but I have to get ready now to hit the road. It's a long drive from here to there. All things considered, I'm thankful to be making that six hour schlep today.

And you know what, Jim Griffith of the Newnan, Georgia Times-Herald? I'm even grateful to you today. You've given me one more reminder of how low we humans can sink if we decide to measure the worth of others with yardsticks designed and built of our own narrow views. You're a good cautionary example of just how wrong we can be, and thus how wrong whole societies can go, when our eyes get so full of our own self-esteem that we place ourselves in judgment of the rest of the world based on nothing but the desire to be thankful to anything other than that little fraction of humanity it is our privilege, and sometimes our burden, to actually know.

Like the majority of Americans, I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with a ridiculously large meal on Thursday evening. Like those millions of other Americans, there's something else I'll be doing early on Friday morning. It's then that I will be thinking most of Mr. Griffith.

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"Blaspheme" While You Still Can

By a vote of 85 to 50, with 42 abstaining, the UN General Assembly today adopted a draft resolution calling on all countries to alter their legal and constitutional systems to prevent "defamation of religions," asserting that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

The decision, sponsored by Islamic states with the support of Venezuela and Belarus, drew immediate protests from human rights activists and legal experts...

— Source

The thing is, Islam is associated with human rights violations and terrorism. So, for that matter, are Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and every other religion one can name. There are also atheists and agnostics who commit acts of violence and violate human rights. Religions tend to foster such things when they become the basis of civil law because religions themselves preserve archaic ideas and practices which, in the light of reason, become obviously barbaric and inhumane. When any system commits atrocities it should be called out for doing so.

Even though this resolution is non-binding, it paves the way for others that will, without doubt, provide justification for the suppression of dissent from both theology and theocracy.

Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, whatever... all just stories, all just impotent puffs of human fear of the unknown, all just excuses to impose a way of life on others by cloaking it in the syrupy nonsense of doing it for the good of the other. If an omhipotent being existed and didn't want dissent and, yes, blasphemy to exist, then they wouldn't. This is just another example of the deep-down epiphany that nearly all true-believers have sooner or later that their deity of choice is incapable of defending itself, and so they must step in on behalf of the gods that aren't there to punish those who would point out that the emperor has no clothes.

You know what happens when you blaspheme like crazy and no human intervenes on behalf of a deity? Absolutely nothing.

No deity that needs the protection of its worshipers is fit for worship.

Fuck Allah, screw Jesus, jigger Jehovah, bugger Buddha, violate Vishnu where the sun don't shine and, most of all, the UN General Assemble can take its pious nonsense and cram it hard. I'd rather sit in prison or have a bullet in me than be silenced on behalf of a magical spirit that some schmuck clings to in order to impose his will on the world by fear.

Don't want people to connect your religion to violence and terrorism? Stop the religious from committing violence and terrorism. Can't do it? Your god won't do it? Guess what; your religion either doesn't work or else works precisely to foster violations of human rights and human dignity. Silencing, or even shooting, the messenger who points it out doesn't change the flawed nature of the dogma in which you have misplaced your faith.

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Rancho Cucamonga Censors Atheist Billboard

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.

SoCal's atheist billboard taken down

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:

Freedom of speech in question as Rancho Cucamonga asks company to take sign down

By Wendy Leung

...Gaylor said sign companies have declined business before, but no company has taken down a sign after it went up...

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said the city's actions are "dangerously close" to censorship and a violation of the First Amendment.

"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.

The City of Rancho Cucamonga's Redevelopment Agency website provides the following contact information:

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.

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Non-Belief in America: A Rising Tide of Reason?

I find a recent story in The Wall Street Journal encouraging (hyphal tip to Greater Worcester Humanists for the lead). It talks about the growth and emergence of the secular movement in the USA and the rather humorous, panicky attempts by religious extremists to push back against it.

Atheists Reach Out -- Just Don't Call It Proselytizing

Nonbelievers Think the Time Is Right to Better Organize Their Nonreligion and Swell the Membership; 'Reason's Greetings'

...During the past three years, membership has grown in local and national associations of nonbelievers. Books attacking faith as a delusion shot up best-seller lists. For the first time, the faithless even raised enough funds to hire a congressional lobbyist.

Building on that momentum, nonbelievers have begun a very public campaign to win broad acceptance. On billboards and bus ads, radio commercials and the Internet, atheists are coming forward to declare, quite simply: We're here. And we're just like you...

Not so fast, religious leaders respond. They point out that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. A poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life earlier this year found 71% of American adults are absolutely certain God -- or some sort of universal spirit -- exists, and a further 17% said they were fairly certain. Only 5% said flatly that they don't believe.

Atheists "are talking to a very small slice of the population," said Mathew Staver, a leading Christian conservative and law-school dean. "In some ways, they're really just talking to themselves..."

Of course Staver would say that. Staver says a lot of things that don't make much sense. As far as his being a "law-school dean," that's technically true... if you consider Liberty University a school instead of a religious indoctrination center. That's a hard case to make in light of their doctrinal statement and the statement of belief that all faculty there is required to sign, though.

In this case, Staver is twisting facts to suit his argument when he says "only" 5%. Even if that figure were true, 5% is not an insubstantial number of people. To put it in context, the Pew Forum's most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey shows that only 1.7% of the population follows Judaism and 1.7% is Mormon. Unless Staver wishes to argue that Jews and Mormons have no impact on the rest of America, that they are "really just talking to themselves," then the same can't be said about nonbelievers. I wonder how these other groups feel about Staver suggesting that they should be ignored?

Secularist groups say their membership began to surge in 2005, when Congress sought to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube. Many new members said they hoped nonbelievers could serve as a counterweight to religious influence in political affairs...

Bingo. As is noted later in this article, the rational community is by no means homogeneous and, by its very nature, is not particularly prone to organizational efforts for that reason. Still, the increasing stranglehold of those who believe that their religion should serve as the blueprint for law over political discourse in this country has served as a goad for nonbelievers to put aside differences and come together to push back against the American shariah movement. We can have rational arguments about those areas of disagreement later; they're just not as important in light of a much greater challenge. To do otherwise is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Rather than renew old battles, such as the symbolic fight to remove "In God We Trust" from currency, members are mobilizing to repair what they view as breaches of the wall between church and state -- such as federal funding for faith-based charities and teaching of intelligent design in science class. They believe many others sympathize with their views -- but are too timid to commit.

I have to admit that as much as I usually dislike having "In God We Trust" on currency, there's a certain irony to the slogan that I can enjoy during the current economic meltdown.

The new ad campaigns and other public-relations efforts are designed to raise comfort levels about atheism by making the point that nonbelievers are "just as ethical and moral as anyone else," said Lori Lipman Brown, who lobbies Congress on behalf of the Secular Coalition for America.

As Doug Krueger, a philosophy professor in northwest Arkansas, put it: "Step one is for people to know we're not crazy, we're just regular people [who have] perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God."

There's an irony, too, in the necessity for people who don't believe in an invisible, omnipotent being and its winged, praise-singing minions to demonstrate that they aren't crazy while belief in divine intervention and incorporeal evil spirits is the norm. Sarah Palin can talk about an immaterial divine hand "opening doors" for her to "plow through" and much of America nods its head in agreement that such things happen, but if we contend that no bearded man from a parallel dimension provides opportunities, that we humans are responsible for the state of our own and one another's lives, we're a bunch of misfits!

So the American Humanist Association is spending $42,000 to plaster buses in Washington, D.C., with ads asking: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." FreeThoughtAction and its local affiliates have put up billboards all over the country asking: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Eight billboards are going up this month in Denver...

Organizers of such efforts generally say they aren't trying to evangelize. Instead, they say their goal is to make the public more comfortable with the concept of atheism and give fellow nonbelievers a sense of community.

In seeking the spotlight, the movement risks a backlash. Some Christians find the billboards deeply offensive, especially at this time of year. In recent weeks, press releases from the religious right have accused atheists of "mocking" and "insulting" Christmas. In rural Chambersburg, Pa., one Christian group responded to an "Imagine No Religion" billboard with a giant sign of their own, asking: "Why Do Atheists Hate America?"

Ah, there's the humorous part. It hearkens back to the days of 2003, when 83% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and those of us who thought it a bad idea were confronted with that stupid question, "Why do you hate America?" If any empty-headed question is symbolic of blind faith, of going along with the crowd simply because it's the majority, that's the one. And just as we in that 17% minority spoke our minds then not because we hated America but because we hoped to steer it away from a direction we thought bad for it, those of us in the 5% that Staver insists is talking to itself are trying to change the course of America toward one that leads to greater reason, to policy based on empirical reality rather than wishful thinking, and to a better future in general. It has nothing to do with hating anything, whether it's a religion or a country, and everything to do with simply being rational. If we have to organize to do that, if we have to reach out to others who have no connection to other nonbelievers in their own localities, so be it.

Still, leading activists say nonbelievers tend to be just as wary of organized atheism as they are of organized religion -- making it tough to pull together a cohesive movement.

"A pastor can say to his flock, 'All rise,' and everyone rises. But try that in an atheist meeting," said Marvin Straus, co-founder of an atheist group in Boulder, Colo. "A third of the people will rise. A third will tell you to go to hell. And a third will start arguing....That's why it's hard to say where we're going as a movement."

No kidding! Independent thought doesn't necessarily lead to agreement; it often results in the opposite. Aside from the core idea behind secular thought — that theology shouldn't be the basis for policies that affect the lives of all Americans — there's plenty of disagreement and debate about the particulars and priorities beyond. That very debate, though, is what reason should encourage. It's how a society learns, changes and progresses. If you find ten nonbelievers in a room agreeing with one another about some aspect of social policy, you can bet that they've been in that room for at least a couple of hours and half of them will probably have exhausted their voices. The very fact that we can change our minds is a strength.

If the theocratically-inclined find this offensive, if they believe that their religions are under attack because we put up a billboard expressing dissent against it and offering some other way of thinking, too bad. It's going to keep happening and all indicators point to it becoming more widespread, not less. That's America for you, and that very freedom is one of the reasons that I, and other secularists, believe it's worth inciting the outrage of those who would take it away. It's a risk we're willing to take on behalf of our country.

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Catholic Bishop: Education is Ruining My Church

Education is only a good thing when it doesn't lead people to question the authority and moral infallibility of the Pope and the Catholic Church according to British Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue. He admits that education has an upside, too, but asserts that it has a "dark side" when it comes to people coming to conclusions about empirical and social reality that disagrees with what a bunch of Latin-chanting clerics think those people ought to believe.

Educated Catholics have sown dissent and confusion in the Church, claims bishop

University-educated Catholics are to blame for the crisis in the Church and the growth of secularism, according to the bishop charged with tackling the decline in Mass attendance.

The Rt Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, has claimed that graduates are spreading scepticism and sowing dissent. Instead of following the Church's teaching they are "hedonistic", "selfish" and "egocentric", he said.

In particular, the bishop complained that influential Catholics in politics and the media were undermining the Church.

While not naming names, he suggested that such people had been compromised by their education, which he said had a "dark side, due to original sin"...

...every human endeavor has a dark side, due to original sin and concupiscence. In the case of education, we can see its distortion through the widespread dissemination of radical scepticism, positivism, utilitarianism and relativism.

"Taken together, these intellectual trends have resulted in a fragmented society that marginalizes God, with many people mistakenly thinking they can live happy and productive lives without him"...

He says that he supports Catholics receiving a university education, but urges they should be "better-equipped to challenge the erroneous thinking of their contemporaries"...

By erroneous he means "anything that doesn't agree with what we told you to believe," of course. O'Donoghue's contention is that the standard by which education should be judged is the extent to which it agrees with church doctrine.

The Bishop himself has a degree from Oxford, but apparently it's an MA in Agreeing with the Catholic Church. The sort of education that leads people to question their beliefs in an intellectually honest fashion, to hold them up to standards of evidence... well, that's just all wrong. A good, Catholic education should consist of rote memorization of Papal talking points.

Bishop O'Donoghue should go squat on a steeple. If that seems disrespectful, that's because it is. This man is nothing more than the Thought Police dressed up in a cassock, an enemy of reason, a stooge, a failure who found acceptance in a big, feudalistic organization that cloaks him with authority and demands it be respected — a sure sign that it shouldn't be.

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Wooful Witch Employment Available in Sweden

A Swedish purveyor of online and telephone witchy-woo has opportunities available for 20 witches/psychics/professional storytellers!

Häxriket i Norden, based in Åhus in southern Sweden, is currently seeking to place five witches each in four separate locations around the country, the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper reports.

According to the company's advertisement on a listing maintained by Sweden's Public Employment Agency (Arbetsförmedlingen), qualified candidates should be well-versed in "contact with the other side, runes, tarots, crystals, herbs, rituals, exorcism, meditation, personal coaching, and more".

— Source

Those are some high experience standards to meet! Runes, tarot and crystals, along with exorcism? Considering that an average human being weighs around 150 pounds, that seems like an awful lot of credulous nonsense to cram into such a small space.

But wait, there's more:

The job also requires having a fixed telephone line and an internet connection, as most of Häxriket's services are delivered online or over the phone at a cost of 19.90 kronor ($2.45) per minute.

Exorcism over the Internet! "The power of spam compels you! The power of spam compels you!" How many emails for penis-enlarging pills and fake Rolex watches can one demon take?

Sadly, the opportunities have been created by the firing of the last bunch of woo-peddlers. Their employer got rid of them because they got caught defrauding clients:

The sudden wave of new hires comes following an internal shake up at the company in which a number of Häxriket's former witches were let go for violating the telemarketing ethics code put in place by the Etiska Rådet för Betalteletjänster ('Trade Ethical Council for Telemarketing') – ERB...

"We've really cleaned house," said Qinna Blomgren, who refers to herself as the "top witch" and is partial owner of Häxriket, to the newspaper.

See, you have to be an honest liar to work as a phone witch, and if you get caught lying dishonestly, a "top witch" will turn you into an unemployed psychic. Poof.

Blomgren is quick to dismiss critics who question the legitimacy of Häxriket's operations.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If I like cinnamon buns with cardamom, it doesn't mean that I can claim it's the only correct path," she said.

Well, there's an intelligent analogy, no?

Yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I'm entitled to the opinion that there's nothing wrong with picking people's pockets, but it's still both dishonest and illegal. Using a telephone or the internet in conjunction with ignorance and superstition to pick people's pockets is still picking people's pockets, whether or not the "top witch" agrees that picking pockets should be a crime. Fraud is fraud, and fraud works best when both the one committing it and the one against whom it is committed buy into the scam. Any good con-man can tell you that. In fact, "top witch" Blomgren just did!

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Transitional Fossils: This Time, It's a Turtle

As much as I'm loathe to use a term like "transitional" in describing a fossil. After all, nearly all fossils are, in fact, transitional. Still, I'll use the word in this case because it should make the importance of this latest in a long series of "missing link" fossils clear to those many Creationists who insist that no such fossil evidence exists for evolution.

This time, researchers have found the fossilized remains of a 164 million year old turtle in Scotland. The turtle is the earliest known aquatic form but still bears many of the traits of completely terrestrial species. Dubbed Eileanchelys waldmani, the new species fills the "gap" between the heavy-boned terrestrial turtles known from Triassic Period and the aquatic forms known from the Jurassic.

Ancient turtle discovered on Skye
By James Morgan, Science reporter, BBC News

The 164 million-year-old reptile fossils were found on a beach in southern Skye, off the UK's west coast.

The new species forms a missing link between ancient terrestrial turtles and their modern, aquatic descendants.

The discovery of Eileanchelys waldmani... is reported in the Royal Society journals.

The turtles were found embedded in a block of rock at the bay of Cladach a'Ghlinne, on the Strathaird peninsula.

It contained four well-preserved turtle skeletons, and the remnants of at least two others...

The historic specimens are now being housed in the National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh.

They were uncovered by a team from London's Natural History Museum and University College London (UCL)...

"It is part of a new revision we are having about turtle evolution."

The new species helps bridge a 65 million-year gap in the story - between the terrestrial "basal" turtles, from the late Triassic, and the aquatic "crown-group" turtles of the late Jurassic.

The former were "heavy-built" land-dwellers, with skulls which were "more reptilian", says Mr Anquetin.

The latter were lighter, and closer in appearance to the aquatic, freshwater turtles we know today.

What happened in between was a mystery, until very recently.

In the last two years, fossils of three new turtle species, all dating to to the Middle Jurassic, have been discovered in Russia, Argentina, and now Scotland...

On the outside, E. waldmani would resemble a modern freshwater turtle - "like the ones you can buy in the pet shop", says Mr Anquetin...

"The differences are on the inside - in the cranial anatomy. They are small differences but very important. There is no other turtle like this one..."

Their findings are reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

"This new turtle is very exciting", said Dr Walter Joyce, an expert in turtle evolution, formerly of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University.

"Keep in mind that a 65 million year gap used to exist in the fossil record between the oldest known turtles from the Late Triassic and basically modern turtles in the Late Jurassic.

"The new turtle is really quite spectacular in preservation, considering that several complete skeletons are preserved, instead of the usual scrap that has to be pieced together..."

That God in the gaps must be very skinny to keep up with all of the shrinking going on. We get a new "transitional" fossil every few months. Dinosaur feathers, 52 million year old bat ancestors, fish/quadruped intermediates, frogamanders... the alleged gaps keep closing, the supposedly missing links keep turning up, and the paleontological evidence supporting various evolutionary theories mounts regularly.

Now, the real question: how long will it take antiscientific ignoramus Babu Ranganathan to come up with another angrily hand-waving spew denying that Eileanchelys exists?

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NOVA: "The Bible's Buried Secrets" Airs Tonight

Don't forget, tonight's episode of NOVA is the long-anticipated "The Bible's Buried Secrets":

In this landmark two-hour special, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues today. The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament.

This archeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?

"'The Bible's Buried Secrets' is both a scientific detective story and dramatic adventure that digs deeply into the Bible and the history of the ancient Israelites through the archeological artifacts they left behind," said Paula S. Apsell, NOVA Senior Executive Producer...

— Source

Readers may recall that this program has the American Family Association foaming at the mouth. In July, Don Wildmon declared jihad against PBS over it, urging his clusterflock to contact their congressional representation in protest and use this particular program as an example of why PBS should no longer receive public funding. The fundienutters are upset, you see, that the program uses scientific methods and reasoning in making the outrageous claims (if you're a fundamentalist religious true-believer with your head lodged firmly up your Dark Ages) that the Bible was written by numerous authors, that the stories are the continuations of pre-existing myths, that monotheism didn't spring into existence at the beginning of time, etc.

All of which is very good reason to watch the show and send a contribution to PBS in support of an effort to investigate reality instead of simply furthering superstition.

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Obama is the Antichrist, the Sky is Falling, and Bigfoot is Coming to Take Your Soul

I shouldn't be astounded at the profound depths of superstition into which great chunks of America has sunk anymore. Really, nothing should surprise me when it comes to the extremes of irrationality that grips far too many people anymore. Nonetheless, it does. It truly does. Even as some of the world comes to better understand the world as it is, to peer deep into the heart of matter and prize out the basic mechanisms by which it works, other parts of it retreat further and further into the dark dungeon of ignorance and fear and bar the door behind them.

It is thus that we find that there are people walking among us who are utterly terrified of the supernatural implications of the last presidential election. Apparently, it's the boogeyman who will be moving into the White House in January. Hellfire is going to rain down upon the planet because of this. The world is ending.

The number one question being asked: Is Barack Obama the antichrist? I've received dozens of emails pointing out the odd fact that the day after the election, the daily pick-three lottery number in Obama's home state of Illinois was "6-6-6..."

I don't see anything shocking in last week's election. I do believe strongly that a dark demonic cloud has swept over the land, but this is how we should expect the end times to play out. And, I foresee more negative events to come. The only thing that worries me is the Christians who fail to see the danger that comes from prophecy being fulfilled in our day.

I believe we are entering a time when Christians really need to set their priorities. Your last chance to do something for the kingdom of God may be sooner than you realize...

— Todd Strandberg, "Fasten Your Seatbelts"

Ummm, yeah. See pp. 51-59 of John Allen Paulos' Irreligion about that first paragraph. On November 5, as on every day, there are several numbers drawn in the Illinois lottery, and the fact is that the Evening Pick 3 number was 666. By the same token, the Midday Pick 3 was 779 and the Evening Pick 4 was 7779. What to make of that set of two numbers numbers? The odds that the combination 7-7-9 would be picked twice in the same day is far smaller than the odds off 6-6-6 being drawn once, so it would seem to me that on purely probabilistic terms the first combination would be far more significant than the latter, but this is a classic case of confirmation bias. 6-6-6 has a special significance to some people, whereas 7-7-9 doesn't, so they notice one number while ignoring the other. It's also worth noting that 6-6-6 was also drawn as the winning number for the Midday Pick 3 of the Illinois lottery on 10/23/08, the Evening Pick 4 (as 0-6-6-6) on 7/5/08 (the day after Independence Day! Clearly, America is Satanic!), the Evening Pick 3 on 3/22/08 the first day of Spring!), and the Evening Pick 3 on 1/16/08, and nobody made a big deal about these other four instances of the same number being drawn on these other days in the very same lottery. Why is that? Simple: on those days, it was simply a random number, just as it was the fifth time it was picked in 2008 on November 5.

It's all in their heads, of course. Sheer superstitious nonsense... omens and portents and witchcraft. Some people who want to believe that the next President of the United States is the Anti-christ go out of their way to find evidence to support their conclusion, then trumpet it about the lunatic echo-chamber until it becomes some superstitious blogger's "number one question." Said blogger, sharing to some extent in the belief (in this case, that Obama may not be the Anti-christ, but he's certainly going to help set this mythical figure on some throne) doesn't do any research to determine if there could be any significance. He simply furthers the ignorance and insanity in which he shares and chucks out a bunch of self-serving babble drawn from something entirely unrelated to American politics, probabilities or evidence from the same lottery that might refute the very thing he mentions yet again. Why dispel a bizarre rumor with sound information when you can preserve it with gibberish?

But wait, what if Obama isn't merely the Anti-christ? What if he's Satan himself! Isn't that special?

I have never been one for making "political" commentary, and I'll admit I haven't deeply explored the issues, but watching from the sideline, I am seeing some connections between our new president, and our old prophecies. Seems like people have been looking for the Antichrist for years, and each generation has never been disappointed to find one, even several! Maybe we have moved past that now to something even more ominous - the beast...

I have heard of Christians who voted for him for economic reasons. They believe he will save the economy. If economics is the most important thing, then our focus is in the wrong place. We cannot serve both God and money. Incidentally, there is only one other reference that I know of in the Bible regarding the number 666, and it is regarding Solomon's gold. If the mark of the beast has to do with our love of gold instead of our love of God, then maybe this is the time when the man of lawlessness has been revealed. Just maybe.

— Nicodemus, "Obama Is Not The Antichrist...But Maybe Something Worse"

Who could possibly refute the argument that people being overwhelmingly concerned about economics during a period of economic stress and voting accordingly is evidence that the person they voted for is Satan? I mean, aside from anyone who wasn't already of the opinion that the person elected was some supernatural force of evil. That economic collapse itself might usher in a period of terrible hardships across the nation and around the globe isn't important. What's important is that anyone who doesn't agree with Nicodemus' priorities, based in turn on his religious ideology, just helped but Beelzebub in power. Shame on you, worrying about the possibility of your kids not being able to get a higher education, about not having money on which to survive after retirement, about being able to keep your family fed and sheltered. All of that's just a distraction! Your family doesn't need such things, because Jesus is signing unemployment checks.

Still, for sheer desperation to believe that Obama heralds the end of the world, it's hard to beat the blatant idiocy of "evidence" like this:

One thing that has amazed me is how Barack Obama is not only considered to be a president-elect of the United States, but also president OF THE WORLD...

The Economist reported that Mr. Obama "quickly scooped support from readers in China, India and most of Europe, as well as from the United States itself. Mr. Obama won the backing of an overwhelming share of voters in 56 countries — including the likes of Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia and South Korea — claiming the support of 90 percent (or more) of those who voted."

The world map was almost a monochromatic blue expressing strong support for Obama, including in the Philippines. The only exceptions were Iraq, Algeria, Cuba and Congo in favoring Sen. John McCain. The general result of this Global Electoral College poll may look lopsided, but it is not unexpected. Opinion polls including one carried by the BBC also revealed that Mr. Obama is the world's overwhelming choice.

How about that? This is significant considering that the Antichrist will also have support of most of the world when he begins his reign. I cannot think of a time in history when an American president was viewed as an "overwhelming choice of the world."

Another fascinating feature about the antichrist is his charismatic personality that leaves people awe struck...

— Rich Wilbur, "Is Barack Obama The Antichrist?"

The fact that the election of Obama is celebrated by a world that has worried over the last eight years of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare against any nation we think might be some kind of threat at some point in the future is a sign of the apocalypse, you see. That Obama is charismatic, that he might have (shudder to think!) a global view, that he's not bellicose and threatening, that the world might breathe a collective sigh of relief... these are signs of an evil nature. Normally, of course, the United States elects uncharismatic presidents who are lazy and anti-intellectual, who view the outside world as a threat, whose finger trembles perennially just above the metaphorical big red button. The election of someone not like this, someone that the rest of humanity thinks might actually be a shift away from a dangerous America, is evidence that he might be the Antichrist.

Now, in all fairness this same author isn't fully convinced that Obama is the son o' Satan:

...Remember, the identity of the antichrist is not for us to know, but for the world to know. He will offer himself up to the world...

In the mean time, we will continue to watch and pray and make associations of what the bible says about the antichrist to Obama or anyone else who fits the bill.

Hmmm... then again, Rich Wilbur is saying that Obama "fills the bill." Wilbur doesn't know that Obama is the Antichrist, but he clearly could be, and Wilbur spends a good deal of time in this piece providing evidence that he is before leaving himself an out at the very end of his supernaturally paranoid screed just in case, you know, it turns out that he isn't.

Of course, we can save any of these bloggers the trouble by simply pointing out that history is filled with Antichrists pointed out by any number of Millennialists and the world is still here and they're still in it. The thing is, these people want to believe this nonsense. They're living in a demon-haunted world, a sort of paranoid parallel universe, inhabited by Christ and Antichrist, witches and ghosts and things lurking under the bed. Spooky stuff, that.

You know, sooner or later someone inspired by the kind of religious fear embodied by these three authors (and untold thousands more equally fretful true-believers; these are just three examples I happened across) is going to try to "stop the Antichrist" with a bullet. It's a pathetic likelihood, but I'm sorry to say that I think it's coming. It'll be someone like Jim Adkisson, some self-styled foot soldier who gets "the message" and decides to do something about it. Sooner or later, there's going to be one lunatic out there who thinks that he or she is going to be covered in glory for attempting to put a bullet into the 44^th President/Antichrist/Terrorist-in-Chief.

This is the sickness that confronts us, even here in the 21^st century, centuries after the Enlightenment. Americans still believe in evil spirits, and they believe that anything they don't like is the result of one of them. And then, sooner or later, one of them tries to kill it.

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On California's Proposition 8, or What the Hell is Oozing Out of Our Ground

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."

— Source

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.

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