The Peristaltic Testator

It's generally bad. For example, take this painting, one shared by The Archdruid Himself:


Jesus, I want more!

That's Jesus presenting the Constitution to the American people, with various, more recognized Founders backing him. The lack of historicity this dreck presents is palpable. Quotes JMG:

I hope I don’t need to point out to any of my readers that the US constitution, that cautious tissue of half-resolved disputes and last-minute compromises, was not handed down by Jesus to the founding fathers, and that it’s even a bit insulting to suggest that a document needing so much revision and amendment down through the years could have come from an omniscient source. I also hope I don’t need to point out that most of the founding fathers shown clustered around Jesus in the painting were Deists who were deeply suspicious of organized religion—and of course then there’s Ben Franklin, skeptic, libertine, lapsed Quaker, and sometime member of the Hell-Fire Club, standing there with a beatific smile on his face, one hand over his heart, and the other doubtless hiding crossed fingers behind his back.

( Still, it presents a starting point for parody. . . . )

PZ Myers railed today against the anti-choice league, and made me laugh:

The argument is about whether that living thing is a person requiring extensive legal and moral protection, and it’s entirely clear that “life” is not a sufficient criterion, or people would be lobbying for the protection of turds and tonsils.

Huh, huh. He said "turds."

Yup. I'm forever 14.

From tacit:

"Past a certain point, any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Just came across this disturbing but hardly surprising article about a religious effort to politicize evangelical pastors:

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Hundreds of conservative pastors in Iowa received the enticing invitation. Signed by Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential contender, it invited the pastors and their spouses to an expenses-paid, two-day Pastors’ Policy Briefing at a Sheraton hotel.

Nearly 400 Iowa ministers and many of their spouses accepted, filling a ballroom here on March 24 and 25. Through an evening banquet and long sessions, they heard speakers deplore a secular assault on evangelical Christian verities like the sanctity of male-female marriage, the humanity of the unborn and the divine right to limited government.

That last sentence, of course, is rife with irony, perhaps even an irony intended by the reporter. How can the "limited government" to which we seem to have a right enforce both sanctity on marriage standards and unborn humanity? Wouldn't such a limited government avoid such personal life meddling?

What got me, though, was not the standard tropes trotted out by the un-Christian right (as judged by comparing their message to the actual teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament). No, I found a little detail buried near the end far more disturbing:

The audience heard how to push their flocks to register and vote along “biblical principles” without running afoul of tax laws against endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

(I testified boldly.)

This, folks, is how Dubya got to be president for two terms. (The probable election shenanigans and the Supreme Court didn't help, I know.) I remember flipping through the channels and seeing mega-church pastors imploring their flock to avoid the sins of the homos and the baby killers by electing the "right" candidates. Not a word about giving your money to the poor. No mention of the Good Samaritan or how to treat the least amongst you.

And since these seminars are all-expense paid, this single example points out the danger of letting money coagulate in high places where it can be used as it is here, to perpetuate the further future coagulation of wealth far from where Jesus himself would recommended it should go.

"Religion: Treat it like your penis. Don't show it off in public, and don't shove it down your children's throats."

-- from some guy's email sig line.

Of the books I've read lately, Clay Shirkey's Here Comes Everybody had some interesting notes on how the internet and easy connectivity has changed how society reacts to, well, everything.

He notes that the Catholic Church has had priest abuse scandals in the past, but this is the first time in history the church has been unable to squelch them. Why? Internet, of course. If you have a cause, you can mobilize people for your cause with the greatest of ease, circumventing the usual channels that were previously if not necessary for organization then certainly helpful.

So interactiveleaf posts recently about a pickup truck with more than the usual ornamentation.



I forward this to a non-LJ friend. Days later, we were discussing the picture. He suggests the license plate is probably racist (in that it contains racist code numbers, not because of the "CV", which probably stands for Confederate Veterans). So, on a wild try, I Google the license number.

Whether he was right or wrong, holy crap. Thanks to that photo, that number has gone viral, and this viral activity has bitten the truck owner right on his ass:

Douglas Story, a Chantilly dump truck driver for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says he wanted to grab people's attention when he paid $224.90 to have a mural of the burning World Trade Center detailed onto the tailgate of his Ford F-150 along with a sticker that reads: "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."

But he got more than he bargained for when a photo of his pickup went viral on the Web last week. Motorists and Muslim groups complained that his Virginia vanity license plate -- 14CV88 -- was really code for neo-Nazi, white supremacist sentiments. The state Department of Motor Vehicles voted last week to recall Story's plates and force him to buy new ones. . . .

And his boss told him that he could no longer park on VDOT property with the anti-Islam mural. So Story spent an afternoon getting new randomized plates and peeling the mural off by hand.

"I feel naked," he said.

Don't feel too badly, Mr. Story. In one respect, the internet has failed, for you can apparently keep your fucking racist Confederate Battle Flag in your back window. Consider it your fig leaf of racist dignity.

Jonathon Haidt gives the best explanation I've heard yet for the differences between us.

He nails the whole discussion right at the end: "I would much rather be a rising ape than a falling angel."

Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer (The guy from the Baloney Detection Kit video) lays down the skeptical, scientific approach in this Scientific American article:

The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants. Show me a Nostradamus quatrain that predicted World War II or 9/11 before (not after) the fact (postdictions don’t count in science). Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Show me, and I’ll believe.