Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good morning, Humans.  It is another overcast FreyaDay.

I will just rest my eyes for a moment, but then I will spring into action and start the day.

I will just rest my legs for a moment. And my back. And my head.

What do you mean you need to sit down at the computer to write? It's FreyaDay!

I will just rest my eyes for a moment, and then you can have your desk back.

Thank gods it's FreyaDay!

Isn't That Just Ducky!

Hello there! I have just come in from my walk. I was playing outside!

It was hot outside. Where did the mudpuddles and snow go?

Now I am hot and tired and I need a nap, but I want to play some more!

Isn't that just Ducky!

Thorsday Tonic - GU Universe Episode 2

Sit back and enjoy some awesome inspiration on a Thorsday morning!

GU Universe:  The Heritage of Life, Episode 2  (Episode 1 can be found here)

Barmy Bible Study - Abraham and Isaac: A Tale of Unconditional Love

Raising adoring eyes to the heavens, Abraham prepares to slaughter Isaac. Now, that's what I call love!

It's Wednesday night, again!  That's right, time for Barmy Bible Study!

This week in Barmy Bible Study we will discuss the story of Abraham and Isaac. Our text for tonight will be Genesis, 22:1-18 (New International Version):

(Note: Atheists and other haters of GOD'S HOLY WORD, scroll past the blue text)

Genesis 22

Abraham Tested

 1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

   “Here I am,” he replied.

 2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

   “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

   “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

 8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

   “Here I am,” he replied.

 12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

 15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring[b] all nations on earth will be blessed,[c] because you have obeyed me.”

This delightful demonstration of fatherly devotion has been a Sunday School favorite for generations.  Christians believe that little children can learn valuable lessons about unconditional love from the story of the father who was willing to murder his own child, and the Heavenly Father who commanded him to do it.

Study Questions for Abraham and Isaac:

1. What did God command Abraham to do?

2. Why did God command Abraham to do this?

3. How does the Bible tell us that Abraham reacted to this command and what does his reaction teach us?

The Biblical god, Yahweh, was one among many ancient middle eastern gods. At some point in history, not long before the Hebrew Bible was set down on scrolls, a sect of Jews had split away from the polytheism of the region. Although most other people in ancient Israel were still worshipping Canaanite gods, the Hebrews selected Yahweh, (but not his consort, the goddess Asherah), an Edomite warrior god, for singular status. Thus monotheism was born.

Monotheism was a very useful concept in the ancient world, just as it is today. When two people had a dispute, they could fight each other and the stronger might win the dispute, but if they were of relatively equal strength, each could point to hir favorite god and claim that the god demands that the dispute be settled in hir favor. But the mythology confirms that not one of the gods could ever be counted on to reliably settle an argument with hir fellow deities - Athena and Aphrodite or Thor and Loki seemed inclined to continue to duke it out forever. The ancient Hebrews solved this problem by elevating one of their gods to special, singular status and - voila! Their god was bigger than all the other peoples' gods!  Finally, the buck stopped there. After choosing Yahweh as their supreme deity, the Hebrews began referring to themselves as the "chosen" people.

Still, even the top god - the god of gods - can feel a little lonely and jealous from time to time, especially when the other gods are always basking in the fragrant smoke wafting up to the heavens from the burning flesh of children! The Bible tells us that while human sacrifice was still practiced during Abraham's day among populations that worshipped the numerous other gods mentioned in scripture, the people who worshipped Yahweh had evolved a more humane moral conscience. Instead of sacrificing virgin children to appease Yahweh's capricious temper like his rivals' worshippers did, the Hebrews had switched over to spilling the blood of lambs, kids and calves and then burning the slaughtered animals instead. Anyone can see how much better that was and it was usually very pleasing to Yahweh.

It is a burnt offering to the Lord: it is a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the Lord. Exodus 29:18

Not good enough, Abraham.

At some point, however, Yahweh needed to know if, in fact, his followers loved him as much as those other gods' followers loved them. The Bible tells us that after finally sending a son, Isaac, to Abraham, Yahweh began to wonder if Abraham might start to love Isaac more than he loved his god.  Because of these perfectly understandable feelings of insecurity,  God decided to test Abraham's love. And what could be more natural than demanding a human sacrifice? After all, the other gods did that all the time. And, since it was Isaac whom the god feared Abraham might be coming to love more, it makes perfect sense that Yahweh commanded Abraham to prove his devotion by slitting the throat of his only legitimate son and burning him to death on a sacrificial altar.

You might think that Abraham would have been paralysed with horror at this commandment and might even have refused to obey it, but you would be wrong. Abraham was a godly man who loved Yahweh.  He was a True Believer™, which meant there was nothing he would not do to demonstrate his loyal devotion - murder, lie, cheat, steal, rape, pillage; everything is permissible when God commands it and whatever God commands must be obeyed, if one is a True Believer who loves God. Abraham did not hesitate. He packed up his donkey, slaves, some firewood and Isaac and set off for Moriah with confidence and, apparently, without a flicker of uncertainty. He lied to the slaves as he left them to take Isaac up the mountain to his doom, and because he was a loving father, he soothingly lied to Isaac when the boy asked where the sacrificial lamb was.

"God will provide" said Abraham, and indeed he had perfect confidence that this would be so. He knew that God had provided for him in the past - hadn't Yahweh finally given him Isaac? - and no doubt he would provide a great reward for the filicide that Abraham was about to so willingly commit. Besides, compared to the glorious works of God, a sign of devotion seems like so little to ask of a filthy sinner. Anyway, as the Bible explains, Yahweh did not really intend to let Abraham go through with the murder. He was just looking for a little love, that's all.

Really excellent advice,
but unfortunately
Bible-believers rarely follow it.

The Bible story of Abraham sets the bar pretty high for most Christians (also the other "people of the book"- I'm looking at you, Muslims and Jews), but millions of the faithful throughout history have valiantly striven ever since to match his devotion to God. Sadly for Yahweh, most fail, because their fatally flawed humanity renders them incapable of the ruthless sociopathy required of a True Believer. Abraham's unquestioning, uncritical willingness to gut and burn his own child is an example of godliness to which all true Bible-believers aspire. For although no one has ever seen God (John 1:18), the idea of the almighty deity is an awesome idea. Indeed, it is an idea which has inspired rare godly men to do unthinkable things for several millennia. The problems of God's invisibility and the unknowability of His will are nothing but a mirage when compared to the certainty of a True Believer. Just as the Bible-believer does not have to see God to know He is there, so s/he does not have to hear God to know what He commands.

Abraham knew what God commanded of him, and he set off immediately and apparently without a qualm to commit a murder. He knew that what he was preparing to do was righteous, godly and just, because it was God's (unknowable, invisible) will. Filled with the joy of knowing God's love in his life, Abraham was ready, willing and able to plunge a dagger into the body of a child to prove his obedience and devotion to God. Even when it turned out that God was only testing him by demanding the blood of Isaac, Abraham did not chastise the deity. Instead, he pulled a ram out of the bushes, plunged his dagger into it instead and offered it as a burnt offering in praise and glory to God.  

Now that's unconditional love!

Class dismissed.

For the LORD your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; otherwise the anger of the LORD your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 6:15.  Understandable, amirite?

Evolu- er Variation! Yeah, That's It!

via Pharyngula: Potholer and Hovind Come Together!

Would you like a quick, easy-to-understand explanation of speciation? Potholer is your man!

This brief, funny video explains everything (even Kent Hovind!)

Tuesday Tonic - Save the Rich!

Sit back and enjoy a bit of awesome on a Tuesday morning.

Garfunkel and Oates:  Save the Rich  (language may be NSFW)

"Save the rich, it's so easy to do!

Just let yourself be ignorant to what's been done to you.

Save the rich, by doing nothing at all

deny all sense and logic and just think really small

You should think really small

Or just don't think at all

and save the rich."

Tuesday Tonic - Sex With Ducks!

Sit back and enjoy a little musical awesomeness on this Tuesday morning.

Garfunkel and Oates:  Sex With Ducks

EDIT:  Unfortunately, this video seems to have been taken off YouTube some time since I tucked it away in my "awesome stuff" folder. Please see above for another great video by these two talented young women. 


EDIT 2:  Well, hooray!  Looks like the video is up again!  A daily double of Garfunkel and Oates.

Wait, Consent Means WHAT?

The future of American women?

Individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy - the principles behind our understanding of consent - were the principles upon which many of us assume the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision was based, although the case itself was focused on a citizen's right to privacy around making decisions concerning her bodily autonomy and medical care.  Laws which deny a woman the right to bodily autonomy - including laws that deny a woman the right to control what happens to her own body in favor of giving any potential fetus the "right" to use her body against her will or without her consent - are an unconstitutional denial of individual freedom because they relegate a woman to a legal status that is less than human. The legal precedent that a woman actually has the right to consent to the risks and responsibilities of pregnancy, and an equal right to decline consent to those risks and responsibilities was thought to be finally established. But since Roe v Wade was argued as a case for privacy, it has never been a guarantee of women's reproductive rights. It has always been vulnerable to attack, either through court challenges or through legislation which has chipped away at it.

One way or another, the
Republican Party will find
a way to control those sluts!

From the moment Roe v Wade was decided, the religious right began working to overturn it. Outraged that women had at last been granted the right to choose if and when to be pregnant -  a right which conflicted with the patriarchal order which demands that men have complete authority over women - the "moral majority" began a campaign of slut-shaming, raising the specter- never far beneath the surface in any misogynist culture - that uncontrolled women would engage in wildly promiscuous and "irresponsible" sex and darkly warning that the new law would bring about the downfall of American civil society  However, when this tactic initially only gained traction within the most conservative and misogynistic segments of society, conservatives realized that the problem was that a majority of Americans in the late 1970's actually respected a woman's right to choose - and that most Americans believed that the consensual sexual activity of women was no more society's business than the consensual sexual activity of men.

Religious conservatives soon zeroed in on "consent" as a potentially malleable concept that they might be able to use to drive a wedge between women and their human rights, thereby setting the stage to put women back in their traditional place.  In order to overcome the legal issue of consent, religious and political conservatives began working tirelessly - using tactics including slut-shaming, abstinence-only purity campaigns inserted into public schools, and falsely equating microscopic blastocysts with full term babies - to entrench the notion that recreational sex involving the conscious avoidance of pregnancy is shameful and that only marital sex which welcomes the prospect of conception should be recognized and supported by society. Their aim was to increase public acceptance of explicitly Christian sexual mores in order to garner voter support for their social agenda. The ultimate goal was to get this explicitly Christian theology enshrined into law: that whenever a woman has consented to sex, she has automatically consented to pregnancy, too.

That's right, ladies, when you consent to sex, you consent to
pregnancy. And when you don't consent to sex, you
consent to pregnancy, too! You and your uteri are in a perpetual
state of consent to pregnancy! Ain't patriarchy grand?

Eventually, extreme conservatives began to worry that exceptions for rape and incest could possibly become a loophole through which some lying women could escape unwanted pregnancy, leading to the push for the elimination of exceptions for rape and incest as legal justifications for abortion. Building on the false premise that a conceptus is equal to a full-term baby, conservatives argued that a fertilized egg, no matter how it came into existence, is an innocent life deserving of protection. Completely ignoring the question of whether a woman who has been raped is deserving of society's protection and adroitly sidestepping Roe v Wade, forced-birth groups wrote bills denying abortion rights to women even in the case of rape or incest which their political arm, the Republican party, sponsored in state legislatures. In one giant leap of cruel imagination, conservatives managed to establish as a serious idea that even when a woman does not consent to sex, her consent to pregnancy should be automatic in the eyes of the law.

Lest there be any doubt about the intentions of the religious conservatives and their hired guns in the state and federal legislatures to render the legal notion of female consent completely irrelevant and completely powerless, forced-birth organizations created "personhood bills" which they instructed their Republican lackeys to sponsor and pass in various states. "Personhood" bills, if signed into law, would confer the full rights of a "person" - a deliberately vague term, but generally considered to be equal to a live-born child - to all fertilized ova. Such laws would criminalize most forms of female-controlled contraception, emergency contraception, assisted reproduction and, of course, all abortions. They would also open the door to state-sponsored invasion of women's privacy and health care rights since legally protected "persons" could potentially be "murdered" before a conception is discovered to have taken place. Furthermore, such laws would criminalize anyone who attempted to help a woman abort the conceptus "person" either by performing a surgical procedure, providing medical abortifacents, or driving a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion in a non-"Personhood" state.

Got that, gals?

"Personhood" laws are the holy grail of the forced-birth movement and the ultimate goal of religious conservatives. If passed, such laws would strip women of all bodily autonomy in matters of reproduction. Women would be denied female-controlled birth control, they would be denied emergency birth control if their partner's birth control fails or he refuses to use it and they would be denied abortions - even if they are impregnated by rape and even if their health or lives are endangered by a pregnancy. In short, thanks to the twisted culture of "life" pushed so ruthlessly onto them by religious conservatives, women would be compelled to sacrifice their happiness, risk their health and even lose their lives because a single-celled conceptus has been granted a right to occupy her body which supersedes all of her rights including her humanity, her dignity and her right to life.

Keep that contraception out
of those sluts' hands!

The Republican Party, which has degenerated to little more than the political arm of the conservative religious right, has been striving relentlessly to ensure that women will be legally forced to bear all of the negative physical, social and most of the financial repercussions for any unplanned pregnancy, while the churches themselves underline and enforce the subordinate and inferior position of women in the culture. Through tireless efforts to withhold access to contraception from women, the religious right ensures that reproductive control remains primarily in the hands of men. Thanks to ideologically-driven appointments to the FDA and the business interests of both drug companies and the medical establishment, only male-controlled methods of reliable contraception are available without a prescription, forcing women to navigate (and pay for) "care" from layers of medical and pharmacy gatekeepers before they are permitted to obtain reliable female-controlled contraception.

Religious patriarchy allows society to label unplanned pregnancy a "women's issue" in spite of the fact that it takes both a man and a woman - both failing to use effective contraception - to create an unplanned pregnancy. The fact that society allows unplanned pregnancy to be framed as a women's issue reveals the depth of the unconscious misogyny which lays the responsibility for - and the consequences of - an unplanned pregnancy squarely in the woman's lap, while little thought - and almost no censure - is directed toward the "guilt", the "promiscuity" or the "irresponsibility" of the man involved.

The old joke about keeping women
barefoot and pregnant?
Not so funny anymore.

More insidiously, when pregnancy and the laws restricting women's rights over when and if they will become pregnant is framed as a women's issue, conservatives ensure that half the population at least may ignore the very real danger to women's health and safety. Few men pay attention when women's rights are being stripped away because the phrase "women's issue" is unconsciously received as a signal that the subject is unimportant and less than men's other concerns. Even men who love the women in their lives are lulled into a false sense of "nothing to worry about" as their wives, their sisters and their daughters are slowly but surely reduced to the legal status of walking wombs compelled under threat of criminal prosecution to gestate the offspring of any man who succeeds in impregnating them - whether by mutual and loving consent, by accidental failure of birth control or by force.

In this way, the religious patriarchy ensures both that women cannot control their own reproduction completely (since women - even abstinent women - can be, and often are, the victims of forced impregnation) and that no man - not even a rapist - needs to accept the decision of a mere woman on the question of whether or not he can use her body to reproduce. That is because the "right to life" of a conceptus is, in fact, really just an extension of men's rights. A conceptus is always some man's potential offspring, and at its core, religious teaching is all about enshrining the right of every man to reproduce. If women are allowed the freedom to choose, some men would almost certainly have difficulty finding a willing mate with whom to procreate. Religions which enforce the authority of men over women and which restrict the freedom and choices of women therefore speak to the root of cultural misogyny - men's fear of the potential power of women to control their (men's) ability to reproduce. "Right to life" is actually the trojan horse by which male rights over women are being inserted directly into women's uteri. That's right. It's a great big legal 'fuck you, women'!

While religions pay lip service to condemning male brutality and offer assurances on how a "godly man" behaves, they strenuously resist efforts to enact laws which could increase rape prosecutions or extend protections for women against sexual assault, citing concerns about - you can guess - men's rights. The ultimate social priority of religion is to confirm and enforce the authority of men over women. To that end, religious conservatives - and their men in government - are willing to grant even rapists and abusers privileges over women, to safeguard the authority of "godly" men. In short, in order to protect the privilege of all men, themselves included of course, even "godly" men who profess to abhor rape willingly award rapists and abusers the right to reproduce using women's bodies against their will. As always, there is no thought spared for the humanity of the women who would be sacrificed to this Christian ideology. At best, they are dismissed as the "blessed" recipients of a "gift from God".

This is already a real thing in
the conservative Christian world

In the Republican vision of the future - as in the past it idealizes - "freedom" and "rights" will only fully belong to men and to the potential offspring of men, while women will be, at best, reduced once again to second-class citizenship, and, at worst, returned to sexual and reproductive slavery. Political, financial and social oppression of women, reproductive slavery and viciously misogynistic church-mandated rules of correct behavior and dress (for women only) are the unceasing reality for millions of women in theocracies around the world.  All of these forms of oppression of women are rooted in the desire of these conservative societies to control the sexuality and reproductive freedom of their women. Almost without exception, societies based upon religious laws which both deny women fully human status and hold them accountable for the sexual activity of both genders strictly limit female freedom and impose exaggerated requirements for modest dress on their women and girls.  If a Christian theocracy is successfully installed by conservatives in the United States, ever-deepening oppression will become the inevitable future for women and girls here.

Religious conservatives want Roe v Wade overturned because they oppose the principles of individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy for women upon which the decision was based.  That denial of those rights would relegate women to less than human status is exactly the point. Second-class status for women would be a feature, not a bug, for Christian conservatives since the Bible commands that women are not equal but subordinate to men. Bible-based religion asserts that man is the original human and woman, taken from man, is less than human. This is the reality of Bible-based governance. It seems like a nightmare from the dark ages, or some dystopian futuristic novel, but this is really happening right now in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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.

Saturday Inspiration - 4 Questions

For your Saturday Inspiration, please take a few minutes to listen to this intelligent young woman answering questions from a theist friend.  It will help bolster your conviction that some young people are managing to become free thinkers in spite of the cultural indoctrination and enormous privilege that religion enjoys all over the world.

Notable and quotable:  (on the value of prayer in difficult situations) "I have to say, that I have never been in a situation that I could do...literally...nothing about. There is always something more useful that you can do than pray. Always." (7:02)

This week, and probably for the next few weeks,  my posts are going to be focusing on issues that are important to children, teens and young adults in our demon-haunted world.  Young people like FactVsReligion will be featured. I welcome suggestions for other great videos!

Hmmm... Homeschooling...

Why are there so many infants in this homeschooling logo?  Curious!

I have been curious about homeschooling lately. I have always been pretty certain that I lack the temperament for it, because even though I always loved spending time exploring with my kids when they were younger - not to mention reading and amassing a book collection worthy of small library status - I really did not think I had the organizational skills nor the sticktoitiveness necessary for success. I have to admit, though, that some days the idea of sailing around the world with my partner and our kids - providing them with the best darn home schooled education imaginable -  is very tempting indeed!

Actors portraying the Nifty family:
citizens of the world!

Anyway, this week I have had more than the usual number of those days and thoughts about sailing away have been drifting pleasantly across my mind, so this morning - just for fun - I decided to look into what kind of resources are out there to help people like me. You know: people who like to daydream about how cool it would be to sail the world with teenaged offspring, living off the grid- independently and self-sufficiently! - learning new skills (maybe the kids could learn a few things, too) and generally becoming quite literally the coolest family on the planet!  The same people who fail to consider the challenges and frustrations of trying to help said offspring finish their high school education while gallivanting around the globe (killjoy!).

Everyone knows that the homeschooling movement in the USA is dominated by religious fundamentalists - the movement was actually inspired by Rousas John Rushdoony, the Calvinist father of American Christian Reconstructionism - but I happen to know at least one secular homeschooler (Hi Jenn!)  so it has to be at least hypothetically possible that not everything connected to homeschooling would have to be drenched in the blood of Jesus.

Yikes! Website banner for Homeschooling Books.com
Education in the shadow of the cross? That is just creepy.

This morning, I decided to idly surf the web to see what resources would be out there for a parent seeking curricula, textbooks and supporting materials in order to provide a good, non-religious homeschooling experience for her children.  I found a secular homeschooling website!  The Secular Homeschool Community homepage lists forums, blogs, groups and resources tabs for homeschooling parents who wish to provide their children with an excellent, broad-ranging, thorough education that is not based upon religious dogma.  Excellent!

Perusing the google search page again, I typed in homeschool textbooks to see how easy it might be to find books and materials to support a homeschooling curriculum as suggested on the website.  At the top of the search results was Homeschooling Books. I clicked on it only to discover that it was obviously geared toward the Christian homeschooling community in spite of its deceptively bland website name and description.

The next site I opened, sporting an equally bland name (Homeschool Supercenter!) looked much more promising.  Their textbook menu included specifically Christian resources and texts, of course, since the majority of homeschooling families are homeschooling for explicitly religious reasons. But at the top of the menu - even before the undoubtedly more popular Christian resources - were several categories of secular textbooks!

Feeling delighted that the second most referred site on the google search for homeschool textbooks offered resources for secular homeschooling, I clicked on the secular science tab and voilà!  A little intermediary page of full curricula packages popped up. On it, not one real science package was featured, but prominently displayed on the top line was "Apologia", a creationist vomitus of Biblical mythology and anti-education, wrapped up in a fancy package with a SCIENCE label slapped on it.

I have news for the Homeschool Supercenter:  creationism is not science. Calling it science does not make it science. Slapping on a SCIENCE label not only will not make that creationist dreck science, but it is false advertising as well.

8th edition of a creationist textbook

Further perusal of that site unearthed what looked to be some actual science resources, but after the bait and switch in the first layers of link clicking before finding the real science buried under the stealth religion, I am not sure it would be wise to purchase them.  I think a secular homeschooler would need to research every text she is considering for her children.

It must be interesting - not to mention a constant training ground for investigative skills - for secular homeschoolers to avoid the traps that appear to have been laid for them by the Christian homeschool movement. Presenting religious mythology in sciency-looking packages and hiding religious dogma in sciency-sounding language in textbooks and materials is the sneaky tactic used by the religious right to trick people into buying that garbage. If they are really lucky, they hope that people will buy into the nonsense, too, thus fulfilling the greater goal of the religious education strategy, which is to deny children a full education - especially denying them an understanding of the scientific method, free thought and skeptical critical thinking skills - thus keeping them ignorant, fearful followers of the teachings of their church.

Parents are free, of course, to deny their children a full education. In fact, it appears that millions have decided to do just that. Encouraged by anecdotal data which point to superior performance of homeschoolers compared to public school educated children, many homeschool parents are rightly proud of what their children  - and they - are able to achieve. But those "statistics"* hide the complete story. Standardized tests can only test what children can regurgitate under less than ideal conditions, not how well-devloped their critical thinking skills have become. There is no way to know whether they have been taught to simply memorize actual scientific theories (which they are told are lies) for testing purposes, while being taught that religious mythology is the actual truth which they must believe or face eternal damnation.

Christian homeschooling websites often post
 optimistic - and totally fabricated - charts like this.

Homeschooling parents who use religious texts for science and history education deny their children access to reality. Worse, like the sciency-sounding but educationally bankrupt creationist textbooks and materials with which homeschoolers dazzle each other and obfuscate reality, the Christian home-schooled child evinces an educated-sounding pseudo-intellectualism which masks a chasm of ignorance so deep the child may literally never be able to climb out of it.

The Christian homeschooling movement continues to grow. According to hopeful Christian homeschooling websites (quickly google** "homeschooling statistics" or similar), it will continue to grow a lot.  I wonder if secular homeschooling is likewise growing?  I am going to keep my eye on this topic because it is related to some other things I am working on about education and the power of the religious right.

Meanwhile, however, I will just keep dreaming!


*My own informal search on the internet for a source of this type of "statistic" report outside the homeschool community turned up zilch. All of the charts and diagrams showing homeschooling superiority that filled pages of goggle** search results came from homeschooling websites and blogs.
** I accidentally typed "goggle" instead of "google", but really, I did sort of goggle at it, too.

Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good morning, Humans.

It is the last Friday in April. There was frost outside this morning.

I do not like to be cold. I do not like frost in April.

I will lie up here on top of the fridge where it is warm. I will stay here until springtime if I must.

It is the last Friday in April and it was frosty this morning!

Thank gods it's FreyaDay!

Thorsday Tonic - The Burden of Proof

(via Friendly Atheist) QualiaSoup on The Burden of Proof.

Just after I finished up my post about the conviction, without evidence, of Catherine Snow in 1834, Hemant Mehta posted this excellent video about a related topic on his blog.  Good timing!

If you've ever found yourself in a frustrating and seemingly pointless debate with a determined theist, here is a video which will explain to you what is happening, and hopefully help you to see how you can approach the theist in a way that might get hir to understand why hir "debating" methods are not honest.

Of course, it also explains why most theists are so resistant to understanding anything of the sort, but at least you will know!

(My only complaint about this superb video - what is up with the one-eyed characters?)

A Valuable Lesson Learned

Well, folks, I just spent the better part of this day working on tonight's Barmy Bible Study - hours of work
- and somehow, some way, the post has disappeared.  I was just finishing it up - moving a photo from one spot to another and clicked "remove" to remove the duplicate photo and    !    the entire post vanished!

Let that be a lesson to me:  I must learn to compose posts offline and transfer over somehow.  This is something I really hate to have to do because the post never migrates over properly, and in the end you have to fuss with it exactly as I just did now - which means I could still lose it.  Except, possibly I would have a back-up copy, I guess.

Just posting to complain because this seriously stinks.

Then and Now - Woman Hanged for Being A Slut

Catherine Mandeville Snow, last slut to be hanged in Newfoundland

One month ago, on Thursday, March 29 in St. John's NL, a mock re-trial of the infamous 1834 case of Catherine Snow was held.  Mrs. Snow was the last woman to be executed in Newfoundland.  She was tried and convicted of the murder of her husband. Two men who worked for the husband were also tried and convicted of the murder. One of them was Catherine Snow's cousin and alleged lover, the other an indentured servant.  The husband, John Snow, had disappeared in August 1833 and no trace of him was ever found. Catherine Snow protested her innocence of the crime right up until the moment of her execution.

After the recent mock retrial, several journalists reported with satisfaction that the modern "jury" of some 400+ citizens (both male and female in our "enlightened" age) had voted to overturn the conviction of Catherine Snow, and all hands appeared to be pleased that justice had finally been served. I am afraid I am of a far less agreeable temperament, however. I am too inconveniently inclined to look not just at the general outcome of a vote, but at the details and what they might say about how people think. Which is why I have written about this today.

The case was notorious because Catherine Snow was widely believed to have been innocent of the murder of her husband, yet was convicted of the crime by an all-male jury reacting mainly to the accusation that she was an adulteress. There was no physical evidence at all connecting Catherine Snow to the crime.  Even for that time, such a deficiency of evidence would have ordinarily caused sufficient doubt about a person's guilt to prevent a murder conviction - and perhaps even prevent a wrongful arrest in the first place - especially when there were two people already convicted who had confessed to the crime.

But Catherine Snow's case was special, you see.  She was a woman, and a wife. As a wife, she was the property of her husband, John Snow, in accordance with English common law in the 1830's. Because she was little more than a piece of chattel, a woman's human rights were almost non-existent. Unlike a male prisoner, Catherine Snow was not considered a person of equal worth to a man,  so the care that might normally have been given to ensure that justice was served in a capital crime trial appears to have been considered unnecessary.

Gossip soon branded Catherine Snow
an adulteress, crippling her defense.

Moreover, as a woman who may have been unfaithful to her owner/husband, she was a "wretched woman" and a "sinner" of a most particular kind, who deserved to be punished.  Gossip and rumor from John Snow's home-townspeople was enough to tarnish Catherine's Snow's reputation which, in turn, was enough to prejudice a judge and jury to convict her without evidence - and apparently without hesitation - even when the penalty for the conviction was death.

Likewise, the indentured servant, Arthur Spring, was John Snow's property. In those harsh times, it was difficult to survive indentured servitude - what with beatings, overwork and the habitual refusal of owners to honor the terms of 'contracts', only about 40% of indentured servants survived to avail of their eventual emancipation - but should a servant dare to challenge a master's authority, the full weight of the law and the citizenry would come down to crush him or her.  Just like runaway slaves in the USA during that era, indentured servants were hunted down if they ran away from an abusive master, and the law would punish anyone who tried to help them:

"Deserted, from the service of the Subscriber, on Monday last, JOSEPH DELANEY, an indented apprentice, about 5 feet 3 inches in height; had on a Moleskin Jacket and Blue Trousers. Whoever harbours or employs the said apprentice, after this public notice, shall be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law. JOHN BERRIGAN, Tailor, St. John's, June 6, 1833." (item in local newspaper)

According to testimony, John Snow was a moody, difficult, possibly violent man.  He is believed to have beaten his wife and mistreated his servants. None of this was considered relevant in the murder trial, perhaps rightly so, but it begs the question of why other irrelevant testimony was allowed by the judge and taken into consideration by the jury. For example, there was no evidence connecting Catherine Snow to the crime of the alleged murder and disappearance of her husband, but the court heard repeated references to her alleged infidelity and to the reports that Catherine was believed to have fought back against John Snow's beatings by throwing things at him.

Most of the 1834 jury - male citizens all - would also have been the owners of wives and indentured servants.  Just the idea that a wife and a servant might have had the audacity to plot with the wife's alleged lover to murder their owner no doubt chilled the blood in the jurors' veins.  A woman trying to take her fate into her own hands - defying her husband, fighting back against his "discipline", taking a lover - seems to have been so upsetting to these men that they convicted Catherine Snow of the murder of her husband out of fear that she might embolden other women (like their wives) and as a punishment for her rebellion against her lot in life.  In spite of confessions from the actual killers - including outright testimony from one of the killers that Catherine Snow had known nothing of the plot (even though he had nothing to gain by exonerating her) - and in spite of the fact that there was absolutely no evidence to support the charges, the jury, knowing very well that she would be sentenced to death, took less than half an hour to convict her.

They convicted her, basically, because they saw her as a rebellious slut. They convicted her because they wanted to make an example of her.  The male citizens of the colony wanted to send a clear message to women: never forget that a woman whose reputation had been ruined - whether by her own actions or by the malicious gossip of others does not matter - would be stripped of any defense for any crime,  She would be judged on her perceived character, not on whether or not there was any evidence that she is guilty of a crime. Shorter version: sluts would be shown no mercy.

At the retrial last month, it was established that the facts of the case are clear. There was a total absence of incriminating evidence against Catherine Snow in 1834 and this fact remains undisputed today. No new evidence which might have pointed unambiguously to her guilt was ever brought forward. The woman was wrongfully executed and the modern "trial" was meant to demonstrate how modern social mores - and stricter legal protections that "guarantee" that convictions will be based upon evidence - are superior to those of a bygone era.

And then they held the vote.

A majority (approximately 250) of the modern "jurors" voted to acquit Catherine Snow, which led to the jubilant reports about the exoneration for Catherine Snow, the wonders of modern justice and the superiority of modern egalitarian sensibilities. Not widely reported, however, was that nearly 200 of the assembled "jurors" withheld their "aye" for acquittal, declaring that there was not enough evidence to acquit.

You've read that correctly: nearly half of a crowd of modern men and women, living in a society which claims to go by the principles of innocent until proven guilty and convictions based upon evidence, would not acquit a defendant of a crime for which there was no evidence against her and, furthermore, made the astonishing assertion that in order to acquit, they would require evidence of innocence.  Apparently, unless Catherine Snow could prove that she did not murder her husband (your honor, here is a gun without my fingerprints on it - and here is another gun without my fingerprints on it - and another...) - obviously a nearly impossible task since there was no physical evidence in the case - these jurors refused to acquit, leaving the ghost of Catherine Snow still languishing in jail, I guess. They were not going to acquit her because there was no evidence not connecting her to the crime. WTF?

Also, four modern "jurors" voted "guilty". Apparently, they had just arrived from 1834 via some sort of time machine.

The self-congratulatory reporting on CBC and in the local newspaper, TheTelegram, focused only on the majority opinion. The full vote was glossed over and even the verdict - acquittal - was incorrectly reported with misleading headlines like "Retrial Finds Last Hanged Woman Not Guilty". The story was spun as an example of modern fairness and equal treatment of both genders before the law. Aren't we just the best society now?

CNNs Mary Snow, a descendent of
Catherine Snow is working on a
book about her infamous ancestor.

I guess I am just curmudgeonly. Being far less inclined to uncritically accept the rosiest interpretation of this event, I insist on focusing on the large minority who did not vote for acquittal - and the fraction who, incredibly, still voted "guilty". What does it say about modern society when a case this clearcut can still only produce a split decision, rather than the unanimous acquittal that the facts of the case demand (after failing to result in the resounding dismissal it ought to have received instead of ever having gone to trial at all).  Spectators remarks - and particularly some misogynistic comments below the news articles - reveal that slut-blaming and slut-punishing are alive and well.

We talk of how things have gotten so much better for women.  In some ways, things have gotten better. Since about midway through the 20th century, in some western countries at least, women have finally ceased to be the legal property of men for the first time in history. Stories like this, however, reveal just how deeply cultural misogyny is ingrained. If Catherine Snow was really on trial today, I am uncomfortable with her odds. We've still got a long way to go.