Those Krazy Katholics Are At It Again

In case you thought that all of the sexual abuse scandals involving the Catholic church were over and done with, we have another round of cover-ups by a Bishop who wanted to hide the misdeeds of the priests in his parish. Refresh my memory, but how many "moral authority" by default cards does a religious organization get before it is considered a degenerate cult? After all of this, I would SERIOUSLY think twice about letting my child be an altar boy if I were a parent and a Catholic one at that.

Oh, and religion turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse is not strictly confined to the Catholics...just look at what self-proclaimed Christian prophet Tony Alamo was doing. The transportation of grossly underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes is hardly befitting for a man who claims holiness in his actions.

Here we see him claiming that this is some sort of government conspiracy against him as well as "Jesus" by extension...



Tony Alamo is found guilty on all ten charges...



Suffer the little children indeed.

Biology is in BIG Trouble

Creationists are causing a nuisance again. This time, they managed to get the Louisiana Science Education Act passed. This forces the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to let instructors teach whatever nonsense the instructors want to teach in place of established scientific theories. In other words, you can bet that this will be the perfect opportunity for intelligent design and other disguised forms of creationism to rear their ugly heads in the public classroom again. As if to drive the point home even further, the book Explore Evolution, by the Discovery Institute (A well-known creationist organization) is expected to be selected as the biology book of choice all across Louisiana. Shame on you, Bobby Jindahl!

Texas is about to fuck itself over as well. The Texas Board of Education spends massive amounts of money on textbooks every year. If the nutty creationists who sit on the Texas Board of Education get their way, this will have a negative influence on the entire biology textbook industry geared towards high school and grade school. This is because publishing companies will start producing more books that espouse intelligent design and other creationist nonsense in order to appeal to their main customers.

To all Louisianians and Texans reading this post, I suggest you go to your state government and public education representatives NOW and RAISE HELL! The future of science depends on you. Creationists are trying to dismantle science in an agenda to impose their narrow-minded ideology on the entire country.

Do not give up without a fight! The Texas Board of Education votes on this matter next week! The details can be read here on the Bad Astronomy blog.

It Is Christmas Once Again

I would just like to take the time to wish my readers a nice Christmas and hope that they got all that they asked for on their lists. I also hope that they get plenty of good food to eat and that their guests do not become too much of a burden. Finally, while you are making sure that everybody is having a wonderful time, do not forget to enjoy yourselves as well.

Although I am an atheist, I celebrate Christmas because the true meaning of Christmas which is happiness and celebration during the dreariness of winter is something that we could all appreciate. All of the religious trappings such as the legend of the birth of Jesus and Solstice celebrations are merely window dressing obscuring what is important, which is to have a good time. Christmas was never originally a Christian holiday because the idea had been stolen lock stock and barrel from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia as well as borrowing extensively from the Yule celebrations of the Germanic tribes. The legend surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ was added much later by early Christians as part of an adaptation of the pagan holiday.

This could be said to be similar how the tradition of Halloween was adapted and eventually secularized from the Celtic tradition of Samhain. Few people who go out trick or treating know the cultural origins of Halloween and how it originally became established. I know that some people have started branding Halloween as a pagan holiday as of late and are therefore refusing to celebrate it, but if that is the case, than Christmas is guilty of that offense as well.

In fact, during the Cromwell rebellion of Great Britain during the 1600's; the celebration of Christmas was banned by Cromwell because he correctly thought that it was pagan by nature and wanted to set a good example for the Puritans to follow. Needless to say, Christmas was immediately reinstated with the reestablishment of the British monarchy during the reign of Charles II.

So keep in mind that the tradition of Christmas is as pagan as holidays come. To all of those people who are saying that non-Christians are ruining the holiday, step back and consider who's holiday it was to begin with. Very few things including religious ideas are truly original, as they are merely adaptations of the things that came before them in history. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Elizabeth Dole's Campaign Actually Backfired

It is doubtful that this was the only reason that Dole lost against Hagan but it does show that it making slurs against atheists in public is no longer being considered acceptable in some social spheres. Within a very short time of Dole airing her infamous ad, her political opponent soon began getting several thousand campaign contributions during a campaign fundraiser in Boston. These contributors were composed of not only disgruntled atheists, but also religious people who thought that Dole's ad was highly offensive and inappropriate even for a campaign ad.

Historically, in public polls atheists are regarded as being the least popular minority by the general populace in regards to being fit for political office. This is why "under God" was added during the Pledge of Allegiance during the red scare in order to distinguish Americans from the "godless" Soviet Union. I am glad to see that people are beginning to challenge the negative perception that atheists have in the US and I hope that atheism will no longer be regarded as a dirty word by many people.

Thoughts on Obama...

The Democratic candidate, Obama triumphed over McCain in the national election last night. In addition, the Democrats also won a few more seats in the Senate. I admit that I voted for Obama and Senator Durbin in my state despite my strong disagreements with some of the more extreme elements of the Democratic party.

As I have said before in a previous post of mine, both parties are by no mean perfect, but the Republicans frightened me even more. Since the 1980's, the Republicans seem to have strongly allied themselves with the religious right which has taken every opportunity to insert itself into the public education system. As a result, we still have fundamentalist Christians challenging the teaching of evolution in public schools in addition to pushing bible study classes and school-led prayer. The quality of science education has suffered greatly under their attacks as many school districts are afraid to even mention evolution in biology class for fear of being shouted down.

Religious fundamentalists have been chipping away at the separation between church and state little by little since the Reagan administration. They could hardly have asked for a better candidate to further their agenda when George W. Bush took office in 2000. He was an ignorant, scientifically illiterate, easily influenced man who could serve as their mouthpiece as they moved their goals forward. This allowed such disasters as the "faith-based initiatives" to be passed in addition to denying public funding for stem cell research.

Trying to define an embryo as a person is nothing short of ridiculous. It does not have an active consciousness, and it is entirely dependent on the uterine environment for its existence. Biologically speaking, the closest thing it could be compared to is a parasite. This is because if the placental barrier ever broke down, the immune system of the mother serving as the host body would consider the embryo as a foreign invader and promptly destroy it.

An embryo could be best said to be a POTENTIAL child, as it is not a child. People do not seem to realize that potential is not the same as actual. Everybody in the world has the potential to win an Olympic medal as well as win the lottery or be involved in other potential scenarios but it would be absurd to say that these would be a realistic probability for most of the populace. There is also the fact that the spontaneous natural abortion rate of human embryos is quite high, due to innate flaws in the structure of many embryos that render them non-viable.

With that being said, the stem cell research ban is religiously motivated, rather than having any sort of scientific or rational justification for being in place. Because of the enormous potential to medical science that stem cell research represents, it is inexcusable that the US government is not dedicating public funding to this field. There are thousands of millions of people each year that are in need of an organ transplant or suffer the amputation of a body part. If we had the technology to grow and regenerate failing or lost body parts, we would eliminate a major source of suffering for many people world wide. Unfortunately, religious fundamentalists do not see it that way and are attempting to ruin it for everybody else much like the perpetual wet blanket at your birthday party. We should deal with them the same way by promptly showing them the door.

Another nightmarish aspect of the current day Republican party has been its stance on civil rights. I do not understand how the Republican party considers itself to be the party of "small government" yet creates bureaucratic messes such as the department of Homeland Security, passes bills such as the Patriot act and the FISA bill, as well as create such idiotic legislation such as Proposition 8 in California. During the Bush years, we have seen the steady erosion of the constitution and other safeguards on government power. The executive branch under Republican rule with the aid of a do-nothing Congress has grown into a bloated monster with little in its way to stop it from trampling all in its path.

Indeed, the Republican party has gleefully aided and abetted Bush as he created detention centers that hold and torture people without charges, even with little reason for those people to be there in the first place. The same Republicans that chastised Clinton for the abusive power and overuse of executive privilege did not seem to mind when the Bush administration claimed executive privilege in order to avoid turning over incriminating evidence by court order. Even Vice President Cheney became so bold as to practically claim that his office was in a "fourth branch of government" and therefore not subject to the demands of bothersome executive orders.

I once had hope for John McCain way back in 2000 when he seemed to be a refreshing change of pace from the assorted undesirables in the Republican party. However, he soon became a continuation of the same failed policies as the Bush administration as his voting record was 90% congruent with Bush. To make matters worse, McCain could be seen embracing Bush in a big open armed hug as if he decided to leave all of that silly talk of "change" behind. For all intents of purposes, the "maverick" had now become another Republican steer. Even worse, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate after branding Obama as being "inexperienced.

Sarah Palin was little more than a gimmick in an attempt to woo away bitter Hillary Clinton supporters from the Democratic party. By choosing a female Vice President, this was an  obvious ploy to take advantage of demographic politics. This proved to be a mistake, because Palin's personality could be described as "vapid" at best and she had even less experience than Obama. To make matters worse, she was a fundamentalist Christian who voiced her open support of the religious right and young Earth creationism at every opportunity. Even if I had wanted to vote for McCain, there would have been a very real possibility that he would have died before the end of his term from health related issues because of his age and past medical history. This would mean that Palin would finish his term, which would have been a disaster of EPIC proportions.

This is not to say that I am not without reservations in regards to Obama. I did not like the way that he voted "yes" on the FISA bill that gave telecommunication companies retroactive immunity in regards to warrantless wiretapping  investigations. I am also not sure what he plans to do about the future of energy production as demand is only going to grow in the US.

The green wing of the Democratic party has been heavily pushing solar, wind, ethanol, and other forms of alternative energy for several decades now. After billions of dollars being funneled into "alternative" energy, it remains clear that it is still not a viable alternative for energy production at all. The only realistic options at this point are coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.

Nuclear would be the best choice as it provides low cost energy at a very efficient scale. As another advantage, it is a much cleaner form of energy compared to coal, oil, or natural gas. It does not produce emissions and the only byproduct of nuclear energy is a small amount of spent fuel that can easily be stored on site or in a geological repository like in Yucca Mountain. Uranium is as plentiful as tin and even at greatly increased levels of demand, it would last for millennia. The only reason why the price of uranium is going up at the moment is because much of the uranium fuel used in the US actually comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads and our stockpile is running low. The uranium industry is in shambles because of the rate of reduced demand since the 1970's which has artificially increased the relative scarcity of available uranium ore. If we actively pursued uranium exploration again and also reprocessed spent fuel instead of using a wasteful open fuel cycle, the price of uranium would once again drop dramatically.

Newer designs of reactors such as the molten salt reactor do not even have to use uranium as fuel, but can run on thorium instead (See my prior posts on the Molten Salt Reactor). Thorium is even more plentiful than uranium and a closed Thorium fuel cycle can be used to breed more fuel. Even better is the fact that the isotopes produced in the Thorium fuel cycle make it practically impossible to divert into producing fissile material for nuclear warheads. As an added bonus, the high heat of some of the newer designs of nuclear reactor can be taken advantage of to produce hydrogen for a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.

All is not rosy, however. The environmental movement which has allied itself with many members of the Democratic party remains vehemently anti-nuclear despite all of the benefits that nuclear power brings. It has used its lobbying clout to effectively kill off any active research into nuclear energy and set up multitudes of roadblocks in the way for the construction of new nuclear reactors since the 1970's. President Carter, a well-meaning but rather ignorant man, passed a ban on the reprocessing of spent fuel due to an irrational fear of his that it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. During the Clinton years, President Clinton cancelled all funding for the Integral Fast Reactor despite its advantages over the Light Water Reactor because of Clinton's anti-nuclear stance. The infamous Al Gore is also dead set against nuclear power as he continues to push for "alternative" energy that does not get anybody anywhere, except the natural gas industry. Indeed, the natural gas industry is rubbing its hands with glee as it sees business increase as natural gas powered generators are being built to take up the slack of wind and solar installations due to the unreliability of solar and wind power.

There is also the fact that in the US, coal is king. There is an existing incentive to build coal plants more than any other form of energy because of the cheap construction costs involved. Coal has massive external costs, but as with most things, short term goals are usually pursued over long term objectives no matter how much more sense it makes to think in the long run. Because coal is so deeply entrenched in our energy policy, the coal lobby has massive political clout in terms of influencing what paths to energy the US takes. Taking into account the amount of ignorance and gullibility as demonstrated by the average political leader as well as the average citizen, there is a very real possibility that the our main plan for the future will be investing heavily into the hoax that is "clean coal".

Obama did mention that he is not ruling out nuclear for the future energy plan of the US, but it remains to be seen if he actually intends to follow through on that claim. There is also some disturbing evidence that he might instead listen to the "alternative energy" segment of the Democratic party and promptly ignore nuclear power entirely like previous Democratic leaders have. However, despite all of the reservations I might have about Obama I still feel that he is a significantly better choice rather than risking putting the Republican party in power again for the time being.

This is Really Getting Old

Theocrats are being dragged into the future kicking and screaming; especially when you have universities in in Kentucky rehashing the Scopes trial even though the issue has long been settled (Or should have been) within the scientific community. America has not been founded with a state religion despite what the religious right would have you believe. How often must people listen to these lunatics before they understand that religion does not belong on the curriculum of a public school?

The fact that religious right is so intent on inserting itself into the US public school system should be a warning as to what exactly it has in mind. It mirrors the "hook 'em while they're young" approach used by the tobacco industry. However, I would say that tobacco executives are more honest by comparison as religion has been running this scam for thousands of years.

Religious Lunatics Strike Again

Anti-evolutionists on the school board of New Brunswick, North Carolina are pushing to have Creationism taught along side of evolutionary theory. According to resident Joel Fanti of New Brunswick:

"I wasn't here 2 million years ago," Fanti said. "If evolution is so slow, why don't we see anything evolving now?"

You DO see evolution happening. There is the current issue of the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotic medications in the medical field that is causing many people to worry. Antibiotics that were once considered top of the line a mere decades ago have now been rendered useless through their overuse and the rapid rate at which bacteria reproduce causing resistant generations to appear very quickly.

Evolution can also be seen in action with multicellular organisms as in the speciation of the European blackcap bird. Its population is splittling into two different migration patterns. This is causing two different breeding populations in the European blackcap that will lead to speciation from geographic isolation if this trend continues.

This is also happening with insects. Some European corn borers are now starting to show a preference for hops and mugwort instead of corn and will emit pheromones that will only attract other individuals with this preference. Because of the rapid rate of reproduction seen in most species of insects compared birds, this might cause speciation to happen at an even faster rate than in the European blackcap. Only a person of extraordinary ignorance of the biological sciences would say that evolution is not currently happening.

Fanti himself offered to teach creationism at the school board meeting amid cheering and clapping of hands. Spurred on by the rally against evolution, board members voiced their opposition to evolutionary theory and their reluctance at being forced to teach it. Apparently, this is a backlash against other states being forced to remove creationism from the public school curriculum.

This is exactly why religion is so destructive. If these people had their way, they would probably replace biology with a class espousing biblical literalism. This is the umpteenth attempt by religionists to inject their nonsense into public schools where they can indoctrinate an entire generation of children. I am doubtful that they would be able to get this blatant violation of church and state past the Supreme Court. However, if this attempt fails the religionists will probably try something else. As it is, I am sure that North Carolina's taxpayers are not going to appreciate being stuck with the legal fees that this is going to cost the school board.

The Watering Down of Biology

The blog, Daylight Atheism brought a depressing article to my eyes today...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/24evolution.html

Apparently, not all states have requirements to teach evolution in schools as some academic programs do not even mention it. Even among the states that do cover evolutionary theory, few of them discuss the evolutionary path that led to humans. Even worse, religiously indoctrinated students often feel they need to challenge their biology teacher whenever the topic is mentioned.

This should be a warning sign of just how entrenched the whole idea of creationism is. The theory of evolution is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding biology and all of its related disciplines. Teaching a high school biology class without covering evolution would be like teaching geology without mentioning plate tectonics. This is why it is imperative that students understand the basic workings of the natural world, because religion cannot be allowed to cheat future generations out of a good education. It is the beginning of the 21st century, not the 4th; and "God did it!" is no longer a valid answer.

Not that it ever was.

Small blood-sucking arthropods...

This is an observation on politics. Those of you who are familiar with the political system in the US know that there are two main political factions, the Democrats and the Republicans. Both of these political parties have traded blows and dialogue with each other since their formation more than two centuries ago. Now this is not to say that the two parties are identical, as there are some key differences between them, but both of them have some rather large faults as they have made the American political system grow so stagnant as we see it now.

Let us take a look at the Democrats first. The Democratic party formed in opposition to the Federalists in 1792. When it was founded by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, it was known as the Democratic-Republican party. The Democratic-Republican party championed state's rights, small government, and the interests of small landowners over the vested interests of corporate and governmental institutions. However, the Democratic wing of the Democratic-Republican party underwent a sea-change during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, favoring an increase in government spending in the form of social welfare and an expansion of governmental programs.

In 1912, the Republican party split off from the Democrats due to internal tensions between conservatism and liberalism in both the economic and social sense. The Democratic party split off with Wilson, the Republican party split off with Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt called his party the Progressive party. With the creation of the New Deal program by the second president Roosevelt (FDR), the Democratic party favored a strong central government over individual states rights as well as an expanded role for the government as a financial regulator. During the 1960's however, things began to get interesting. Up until the 1960's, the American southern states were traditionally Democratic until the Southern Democrats became infuriated over the civil rights legislation passed by president Kennedy. Democrats in the South quickly defected to the Republican party.

The Democratic party underwent another massive identity shift with the rise of the "green" movement during the late 1960's. This pushed its policies further to the left in the fiscal sense with the increased calls for environmental regulation of industry and business. The vilification of nuclear energy was swept up in this movement with the disasters at Chernobyl and the movie The China Syndrome released right before the Three Mile Island near-disaster caused many environmentalists to ally themselves with the Democratic party. This was to try and influence the government to impose strict regulations on what they saw as a threat to the environment.

The "deep green" movement continues to appeal to many politicians in the Democratic party today, who are eager to try and capitalize on this particular segment of the voting populace as it grows in power. Al Gore is a noted example of this phenomenon as he embraces the ideological philosophies of groups such as Greenpeace to form his opinion on what direction the nation's energy policy should take rather than looking at the feasibility of meeting the energy demand of the nation using intermittent and inefficient energy sources such as ethanol, solar and wind power, while shunning nuclear power because of ideological bias.

The Republican party is in many ways even more dangerous and misguided than the Democratic party because it seems to have completely abandoned the idea of social liberalism as well as fiscal conservatism, with the Regan administration while embracing religious fundamentalism. Since the 1980's the Republican party has become more and more puritanical, anti-homosexual, anti-science and more authoritarian as it purges the "moderates" from its ranks in order to enforce a top down ideology based on judeo-christian principles in order to pander to the religious right. The frequent mention of "smaller government" as being one of the principles of the Republican party has long since been abandoned with measures designed to make the government more intrusive into the private lives of American citizens, such as the domestic spying program put forth by the Bush Administration. To make matters worse, the quality of the scientific education offered in our public schools has been suffering greatly as religious fundamentalism tries to sneak creationism into the curriculum under the mask of "Intelligent Design" and other disguises, and this strategy seems to have gotten more than a few sympathetic ears amongst the Republican party. When the religious right has destroyed biology, they will probably swarm and systemically destroy all the scientific disciplines one by one. Astronomy and Geology are probably next.

To make a long story short, both parties are increasingly adhering to rigid ideological principles, each dangerous in their own way. Between the two, I think the Democrats are somewhat less dangerous, but unless we can prevent the "environmentalists" from tampering with a practical energy policy, we will soon be restricted to medieval technology. I consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that I believe that a rational approach to solving environmental problems with cleaner solutions based on SCIENCE rather than ideology is important. Our need for energy is going to have to come from somewhere and forcing energy rationing and fantasy "renewable" solutions down everybody's throats is not going to do the environment any favors at all because people will then resume cutting down trees left and right to use in wood-burning stoves since everything else will probably be outlawed.