Monday Majesty - Science Saved My Soul

Sit back and soak up the wonder on a Monday morning.

From philhellenes: Science Saved My Soul

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The blogosphere was on fire over the weekend with a video and reports about Dan Savage's talk at a high school journalism convention.  Dan Savage is the co-founder of the "It Gets Better" anti-bullying campaign and he was at the conference to speak on the subject. There has been a fierce pushback from conservatives against anti-bullying campaigns, with particular viciousness reserved, as usual, for anti-bullying of LGBT people.

It is impossible to have an honest discussion about bullying without mentioning the Bible. The Bible has been cited by Christians as the authority upon which they base their rejection of homosexuality, and thanks to the extreme privilege of religion in society, this Biblical authority is accepted all too often in society as a defense for "understandable" Christian outrage toward unbiblical "choices".

Incredibly, when Christians persecute their gay peers, the power of religious privilege is so total that society is inclined to regard the Christian bullies as the victims. In fact, as I mentioned in another post earlier today, attempts have been made to grant Bible-based religious bullying specific legal protection in at least one state, formalizing and codifying what has long been the de facto position in virtually every state, anyway.

The moment Dan mentioned the word "bible", a student popped up out of her seat and walked out of the room, followed by a thin stream of smiling, smirking students who were obviously planted in the room to perform this bit of political theatre. One wonders if these student "journalists" heard any of the talks at the conference that did not confirm what they already "know", or were they simply sent there with virtual antennae raised until the dog whistle they were waiting for had sounded, triggering their patently insincere march of Christian persecution.




Several atheist bloggers have posted about this, and the subsequent twisting of the incident in the conservative media. Most were supportive of Dan and proud of the way he reacted by continuing his talk while acknowledging the rudeness of the walkout with the restrained scorn that such a premeditated and clearly orchestrated display deserved.

Behind the scenes, however, it appears that Dan received something far less than enthusiastic support. Although we can only speculate, it appears that forces with the power to destroy Dan's career made it clear that "one simply cannot call anyone’s religion “bullshit” in today’s America". Soon after the incident went viral, Dan Savage bowed to pressure to apologize to Christians for his remarks.

Some bloggers have reacted with emotions ranging from sadness and disappointment to defiance and outrage. Jen McCreight and Daniel Fincke are two bloggers whose approaches are slightly different (Jen is a science grad student; Daniel is a philosopher) but who make the same point:  it is time to stand up and say that religion should not be given unearned "respect" and deference.

From Camels With Hammers:

"Such demands make it clear to me that it is absolutely incumbent on those of us who think religions are bullshit to start saying so more frequently and to fight to stop this trend of insidious undue deference to baseless believing. It is the result of decades’ worth of concentrated effort by the Religious Right to make politics bow the knee to fundamentalist religion combined with the Left’s confused understanding of the value and limits of multiculturalism. No one deserves to be made into a second class citizen on account of their beliefs. But American freedom of speech has to not only politically but morally and intellectually guarantee that all beliefs are open to rational scrutiny by public figures and intellectuals without fear of career reprisals.
Religions do not deserve the support of the rules of politeness when it comes to their truth and falsity. The public sphere should not revere indiscriminately everything that tries to halo itself with the name of religion. The secular public sphere should feel no such shyness about sacrilege, blasphemy and treating religion rudely less it implicitly be in the political thrall of the religious sphere. To so refrain from unqualified, scrupulously rational, public criticism of religion is to favor and support it implicitly. This is intolerable. Forcing atheists to honor the excessive reverences of religious feelings is coercing atheists to treat as sacrosanct that which their own consciences do not judge to be genuinely sacrosanct. This goes beyond normal social politeness and deference to other cultures’ traditions to the point of atheists having to de facto accept religious restrictions in their own right, on account of their being religious. That’s intolerable to my atheistic conscience and should be to other atheists’ consciences as well, as it cuts to our very right to live thoroughly independent of deference to all religious authorities which we don’t believe in." Daniel Fincke, "Follow up on Dan Savage's attack on the Bible that inspired walkouts."


From Blag Hag:

"We can use “bullshit” to describe ideas like astrology, reptilian conspiracies, alien abductions, Big Foot… but God is off limits, despite being equally ridiculous.

That’s why Christian groups cry foul when someone points out flaws in their religion. It’s not their emotions that are so fragile: It’s their faith. Because Christianity, like all religions, simply cannot stand up to questioning. It’s why so many parts of the Bible actively denounce questioning faith. It’s why Christians have to run out of talks and make press releases about persecution. Because Christianity crumbles in the face of history, biology, and analytical thinking. Silencing dissent is the only way for Christianity to survive." Jen McCreight, "Christianity is bullshit, and I'm not apologizing for saying that."

Sen. Gretchen Whitmer for President!

Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, ally of Michigan youth 

In 2008, a clear majority of voters in the state of Michigan sent a strong message to their legislators that they approve of stem cell research and want it to go forward in their state universities. The University of Michigan has gained a reputation as a world leader in stem cell research for cures for several diseases and the people of the state rightly wanted that reputation - and the valuable research for which it was justly earned - to continue unmolested by partisan politics fueled by powerful special interest groups. So, of course you can guess what is coming.

Last year, Michigan house Repubicans, to please their socially conservative corporate backers, decided to execute an end run around the will of the people by inserting language into education funding bills demanding detailed - and unnecessarily burdensome - reports on details of the stem cell research over and above what had previously been required by the law. During the contentious debates which followed, the Republicans went as far as suggesting that the university was evading established rules of accountability to obtain funding underhandedly. Using the most devastating play in the conservative right-wing's handbook, the Republicans appealed to the well-tended public distrust of intellectualism and science, conflating them with their liberal anti-god conspiracy fears which have been equally carefully nurtured over the past few decades by the religious right and its political arm, the Republican party.

Democrats trying to prevent yet another Republican religious attack on higher education argued passionately to repeal the onerous language which had been inserted into the funding bill last year (and which threatens to be continued this year). In spite of these efforts - and in direct defiance of the will of the people who voted in November 2008 to allow stem cell research to proceed - the Republican controlled House and Senate passed the punitive, research-suppressing measures.

It seems that the corporate and religious right is perfecting its strategy to completely bypass the democratic process, undermine the republic and achieve its goal of near total power through a puppet democracy.  Thanks to Citizens United, they can now operate as super citizens - a tiny, elite and powerful group controlling 99% of the country's wealth - by pouring money into campaigns to ensure the elections of their personal agents in legislatures across the country. Using the Republican party as their political arm, powerful special interests - nearly always an alliance of churches and corporate "citizens" - now effectively rule the United States. Sadly, they have achieved this oligarchy with the willing compliance of millions of "moderate" Americans who have remained unwilling to rock the boat of their comfortable religious communities by speaking out against religious influence on public policy.

Senator Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, spoke out on the education funding nightmare, defending the right of American students and researchers to continue to receive the funding which the people of Michigan have declared they are entitled to receive.






In addition to fighting to save the world-class reputation of Michigan universities, Senator Whitmer has also stood up courageously for gay Michigan youth. In the fall of 2011, she gave this powerful speech on bullying after the Senate passed the Matt's Safe School Law. The outrageous law, cruelly named after a young Michigander who had been driven to suicide by relentless bullying by religious schoolmates, was touted as an "anti-bullying" law, but in fact gave legal protection to bullies whose persecution of others is justified by their religious beliefs.

Watch Sen. Whitmer's brief, but powerful remarks:





While religious conservatives and their corporate allies celebrate their almost total dominance of American government and society, there still remain a few dedicated voices for social justice and liberal ideals. Senator Gretchen Whitmer stood up for Michigan youth, for education and for scientific research, all anathema to the oligarchy which seeks to reduce American society to an uneducated feudal state.

What? War On Secularism, Too?

Got that heathens? Secularism is not only unnatural, but harmful!

Read Rick Perlstein's article Behind the Right's Phony War on the Nonexistent Religion of Secularism.

"The professional right had found its substitute for the Red Menace. In many ways "secular humanism" was Communism’s superior as an organizing tool, because it so handily took the fight directly to the bloodiest crossroads in our political culture: the space between the public school and the home. There is no more effective way to organize against liberalism than to argue that liberals are invading the sacred precinct of the nuclear family – the basic unit of government under God's covenant, as the "Christian Reconstructionist" Rousas J. Rushdoony, father of the home-schooling movement, argued in his 1972 book The Messianic Character of American Education. The power-grabbing would-be-messiah government must be defeated, argued Connie Marshner, a Heritage Foundation staffer influenced by Rushdoony, if Christians were to "reverse the coming of the secular humanist state."

Women Unite 4.28.12

To salute the WomenUnite rallies protesting the War on Women. 

I cannot believe that we are still fighting this battle in 2012.