Finally! Someone sees through the façade.

That is how the Pope has come to be spun as a left-liberal idol. Whenever he proves himself loyal to Catholic teaching — denouncing abortion, for instance, or saying that same-sex marriage is an ‘anthropological regression’ — his liberal fan base turns a deaf ear. Last month America’s oldest gay magazine, the Advocate, hailed Francis as its person of the year because of the compassion he had expressed towards homosexuals. It was hardly a revolution: Article 2358 of the Catholic church’s catechism calls for gay people to be treated with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity’. In simply restating Catholic teaching, however, Francis was hailed as a hero. When a Maltese bishop said the Pope had told him he was ‘shocked’ by the idea of gay adoption, that barely made a splash. Time magazine, too, made Francis person of the year, hailing him for his ‘rejection of Church dogma’ — as if he had declared that from now on there would be two rather than three Persons of the Holy Trinity. But for cockeyed lionisation of Francis it would be hard to beat the editors of Esquire, who somehow managed to convince themselves that a figure who wears the same outfit every day was the best dressed man of 2013.

Some pundits have noticed the gulf between what you might call the Fantasy Francis — the figure conjured up by liberal imagination — and the actual occupant of the Chair of St Peter. James Bloodworth, editor of the political blog Left Foot Forward, recently urged his journalistic allies to show some restraint. ‘Pope Francis’s position on most issues should make the hair of every liberal curl,’ he wrote. ‘Instead we get article after article of saccharine from people who really should know better.’

I’ve been astounded at how many atheists have been taken in by this geezer. He’s the goddamn POPE; by nature, intent, and training he’s fanatically against everything atheism stands for.

We woke up at 4am to a strange gurgling sound and a flooded kitchen. Y’all know what that means: emergency plumbing service call and a big bill to come. I am now waiting by the phone for a return call.

Also, had to clean up the mess, and this was dirty, foul, black water. I’m a bit worried about what that means.

New York Daily News
Christian School Teacher Fired After Deciding to Live 2014 as an Atheist
KTLA
He would interview atheists, attend gatherings of nonbelievers and read through the canon of skeptics: Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, among others. When friends got sick, instead of praying, as was once ...
Ex-pastor loses jobs after proclaiming he'll 'try atheism'New York Daily News
Atheists Raise $17K for Former Pastor Living Year 'Without God'Christian Post
Trial Atheist Might Be A SimpletonThe American Conservative
The Inquisitr
all 51 news articles »

OK, this is a disgrace. Io9 has an article on the hierarchy of nerds, and here’s their ranking:

1. Comic book fans

2. Toy collectors

3. Anime fans

4. Collectable card game collectors

Jebus. How low has nerddom fallen? This is a list of passive gatherers of the obscure and silly.

I’m not even going to try and rank them, but these are the true nerds: Science nerds. Math nerds. Chess nerds. Ham radio nerds. Radio shack nerds. Hackers. Heck, does anyone even remember the day when the kings of the heap of tech tinkerers were the model railroad nerds?

There was a time when being a nerd meant something other than being a consumer of entertainment.

TheBlaze.com
What Ever Happened to the Teen Atheist Who Successfully Battled to Ban Her ...
TheBlaze.com
Jessica Ahlquist, the teen atheist who successfully fought for the removal of a prayer mural that once hung in her former high school in Cranston, R.I., put herself at the center of a major church-state battle back in Jan. 2012. At the time, she argued ...
Teen atheist Jessica Ahlquist is doing wonderfullyallvoices

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That new book about lovely atheists by Chris Johnson, A Better Life. I’m supposed to be in it, but it’s been sitting in a box outside all day, and it’s frozen solid and painful to touch, so I can’t open it yet. Later. Order it now!

The Clergy Letter Project has announced the ninth annual Evolution Weekend, February 7-9, 2014. Their theme this year is Different Ways of Knowing/Asking Different Questions, and they say, Evolution Weekend is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. An ongoing goal has been to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic, and to show that religion and science are not adversaries. Rather, they look... Matt Young http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung

ABC15.com (KNXV-TV)
Pastor denounces God for one year, tries atheism
wtkr.com
He would interview atheists, attend gatherings of nonbelievers and read through the canon of skeptics: Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, among others. When friends got sick, instead of praying, as was once ...
Trial Atheist Might Be A SimpletonThe American Conservative

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Today I broke down and made a word cloud. But, it’s a pretty awesome word cloud. It shows the top 75 words used in my research publications in 2013 (excluding common words). M. Wilson Sayres’ 2013 research publication word cloud. I used http://www.wordle.net, which is nice because it also has code you can modify yourself. I was also directed to http://www.tagxedo.com, which has the advantage of making word clouds in fun shapes.... M. Wilson Sayres http://mathbionerd.blogspot.com

Paul Hellyer was the Canadian Minister of Defence in the 1960s, and I now think he’s one of the reasons we’ve haven’t been worrying about Canadian Panzers rolling southward to crush the United States beneath their very polite bootheels. He explains what he really, really believes.

There are about 80 alien species visiting the earth through a portal in the Andes, and some of them look like people from Denmark and have been disguised as nuns (I KNEW IT!). The astronomers will be thrilled to learn that there is a new planet orbiting Saturn called Andromedia.

One thing: never play poker with the woman presenter of this show. She maintains an absolutely straight face throughout the interview. Of course, Paul Hellyer is saying the most ridiculous things in a dead serious tone, too.

Maybe Canadians are actually kind of creepy.

This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.

Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread

Creationist John Mackay gave a talk at the University of Western Australia, and as these wackaloons are wont to do, also expressed lunatic opinions beyond his belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old. In particular, creationism seems to be rife with misogynistic and homophobic twits.

After the lecture many of the attendees stayed for a BBQ and to talk to John Mackay. He made various homophobic comments, including using homosexuality as his go-to example of “immorality” in modern society. In a conversation about the Bible after the lecture, a student pointed out that the Bible condones rape in the following passage from Numbers 31:

“17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

Mackay argued that this is not rape, because the girls were forced to enter a “legitimate Jewish marriage” first (after having their family murdered by their soon-to-be husbands), and obviously you can’t rape your own wife. Not only is it not rape, but Mackay believes this is apparently not even immoral for God to command this and for the Israelites to carry it out.

Typical. Although it does suggest a new strategy for wanna-be rapists: get ordained first, or have an ordained wingman. Say a few words over your unconscious victim, grab her head and make it nod in agreement, then go to town. One of the results of marriage is the complete loss of volition by the bride, turning her into a meat puppet for your convenience.

Be sure to pick a religion that lets your priestly types say a few words afterwards to annul everything!

Or maybe we should just take religion out of marriages, and all relationships, altogether. It doesn’t seem to be a very good guide for moral behavior.

Pastor tries atheism, loses jobs, gains $19000
CNN (blog)
(CNN) - In the past, at times like these, when his life foundered and frayed around the edges, Ryan Bell often prayed for help. But this year, at least, the pastor has resolved not to. For the next 12 months, Bell says he will live as if there is no ...
Trial Atheist Might Be A SimpletonThe American Conservative

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We’ve just begun a temporary cease fire in the War on Christmas (have no fear, Bill O’Reilly will start firing salvos of hot air again next October), which was a ridiculous contrivance: atheists aren’t fighting against Christmas, we’re just here. We’ve also lately seen that the Republican party is becoming increasingly creationist — they’re signing up for a War on Evolution. What’s really going on, as Charles Blow explains, is that the fanatical right has found the war metaphor a useful tool for rallying idiots.

But I believe that something else is also at play here, something more cynical. I believe this is a natural result of a long-running ploy by Republican party leaders to play on the most base convictions of conservative voters in order to solidify their support. Convince people that they’re fighting a religious war for religious freedom, a war in which passion and devotion are one’s weapons against doubt and confusion, and you make loyal soldiers.

They need a War on Something to feel commitment, whether it’s a War on Terror or a War on White People or whatever. The important things are that 1) it has to be a war on an abstraction, so there isn’t actually any risk of sacrifice, 2) the promoters of this “war” hasten to reassure everyone that they are going to battle to pander to The People, and 3) The People are eager to reciprocate by affirming their support for the promoters. It’s a good game.

Now the latest: there is a War on Shakespeare, announced on the incredibly credible pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section, where reason always goes to die.

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton —the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the "Empire," UCLA junked these individual author requirements. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.

It’ll be interesting to see if this one gets any traction. The People would rather not read Shakespeare — only out-of-touch liberal elitist academics who attend the MLA do that — but I suspect that won’t matter. They don’t have any real commitment to Christianity, either, but nothing will rile ‘em up more than criticizing religion, so I can imagine them happily putting some old Elizabethan dude on a banner and waving it. It also has the virtue of being a totally imaginary war, just the way they like it.

For a good corrective, just read this article on what the UCLA English department actually did. They still teach Shakespeare — I imagine that there are many faculty who actually like Shakespeare.

Never mind that UCLA probably got rid of the three single-author course requirements because single-author courses are tough to teach, and can be murder to take (guess what? Not everybody likes Chaucer enough to spend 15 weeks on him, and that’s OK). Never mind that the UCLA English major still requires plenty of historical literature classes, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton. Never mind that students don’t actually have to take a gender or race studies course, as they’re two of several options for fulfilling the breadth requirement. Those are but irrelevant facts, but since said facts involve giving students a choice to take a course on Queer Literature since 1855 (Tennessee Williams? James Baldwin? Gertrude Stein? Oh no!), they surely herald the continuing descent into Gomorrah.

It might still play with the crowds, though. Gays and women and blacks replacing white English guy? As good an excuse for an apocalypse as any.

After a schism, a question: Can atheist churches last?
CNN (blog)
The world's most voguish - though not its only - atheist church opened last year in London, to global attention and abundant acclaim. So popular was the premise, so bright the promise, that soon the Sunday Assembly was ready to franchise, branching out ...
There's No Atheist Church 'Schism' No Matter What CNN PublishesPatheos (blog)

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She tears into a phenomenon that bothers me, too: white evangelical ministers jumping ship for atheism, being embraced by atheists, and tainting atheism with the Christian culture. In particular, there’s this awful parasite, Ryan Bell, who’s only just trying out atheism for a year, which is simply ridiculous — it’s not a set of superficial practices, it’s a mindset. What’s he going to do at the end of the year, erase his brain?

A thriving brand of secular tourism can now be definitively filed under the category “stuff white people like”:  Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta has sponsored a crowd-funding campaign for a white male former pastor named Ryan Bell who—in a bit of brilliant PR stagecraft—“decided to…give atheism a try” for a year.  As a result of his “experiment” Bell was fired from two Christian schools.  Currently the campaign has far exceeded its $5,000 goal, generating over $16,000 from 700 plus donors in one day.  Bell joins a jam-packed, largely white, mostly Christian cottage industry of religious leaders who are capitalizing off of untapped reserves of atheist dollars, adulation and publicity by jumping onto the “maverick ex-pastor” bandwagon. 

But there’s more to it than that. American culture as a whole tends to be racist, and atheists are following the majority.

In studies conducted by Princeton University researchers, white job seekers with criminal records were slightly more likely to be called back for and/or offered entry-level jobs than African American job seekers with no criminal record. According to lead researcher Devah Pager, “Even whites with criminal records received more favorable treatment (17%) than blacks without criminal records (14%). The rank ordering of (these) groups…is painfully revealing of employer preferences: race continues to play a dominant role in shaping employment opportunities, equal to or greater than the impact of a criminal record.”

That’s the problem: that racism cuts people off at the level of denying them opportunities, so they don’t get a chance to demonstrate competence, providing a self-perpetuating basis for the myth that they’re less qualified. It’ll never end unless everyone consciously opens the doors and encourages more participation; unless we recognize the handicap that assumed white dominance places on all others who have slightly more melanin.

She also points out one egregious example of failure by atheist organizations:

For example, although many atheists profess a commitment to ‘science and reason’ there are still no atheist STEM initiatives that acknowledge the egregious lack of STEM K-12 and college access for students of color. In their zeal to brand predominantly religious communities as backward, unenlightened and unsophisticated in the exceptionalist ways of Western rationality, atheist organizations are MIA when it comes to discussions about STEM college pipelining, STEM literacy and culturally responsive recruitment and retention of STEM scholars and professionals of color in academia.” While white atheists give jobs, “atheist” pulpits and big bucks to American secular tourists numerous black churches support STEM tutoring, mentoring, college access and scholarship programs to confront the gaping educational divide between white and black America.

There are, unfortunately, a substantial number of atheists who declare that anything beyond simply stating there is no god is ‘mission creep’. They can cheer when a prominent scientist like Richard Dawkins endorses atheism, but recognizing that a commitment to science means a heck of a lot more than clapping really hard at a talk is too much for them. They like science, and isn’t atheism supposed to be just about affirming what they already like? Oh, and of course, affirming how stupid people are who don’t like the things we do.

But taking that next step and realizing that a commitment to science means investing and working towards expanding knowledge of science is hard. Exercising political will is hard. Demanding social change is hard. But that’s what atheists need to do if they are to be something more than an empty label.

I’ve been seeing first-hand what it takes to expand an idea, and atheism isn’t doing it. Science is. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people at HHMI and NIH, and their focus is crystal clear. They prioritize getting science done, and they don’t give a damn whether it is a white hand or a brown one doing it.

The demographic trends are perfectly obvious: America is going to become a majority-minority country in the next few decades (states like California and Texas are already there), which means white people aren’t going to be the dominant default anymore. At the same time, when these grant agencies look at who is doing science, they’re mostly white and minority populations are largely excluded. They can do the math, they’re scientists. It means we can’t afford to discriminate against the largest subpopulation as a pool of potential scientists.

So there are programs in place at all the big science funding agencies to encourage an expansion of that pool, before the trends kill us. Even my little HHMI grant is designed with the goal of giving underserved populations a chance to do science at the undergraduate level.* These represent commitments of money and time to give those who are denied by default assumptions an opportunity to prove themselves. That’s what we need more of, not just lip service.

I know all the major atheist organizations either have a narrower goal, or are making major efforts to grow the atheist community. If your goal is to just grow your membership, it’s always tempting to just focus on the people you’ve already got, and just try to get more. But grabbing a greater share of a shrinking subpopulation is short-term thinking. Long term, you have to invest in recruiting from the faster-growing subset — and the atheist organizations that are still going to be here in the future need to make that commitment now.

*By the way, women are not considered an underserved population in undergraduate education any more. We have no problem getting women involved in entry-level science — the problems come later for women, when it’s time for promotion and moving on to professional status. That’s a ceiling minorities hit as well; these are problems that have to be addressed at multiple levels.

Christian Post
Pastor tries atheism, loses jobs, gains $19000
CNN (blog)
(CNN) - In the past, at times like these, when his life foundered and frayed around the edges, Ryan Bell often prayed for help. But this year, at least, the pastor has resolved not to. For the next 12 months, Bell says he will live as if there is no ...
Atheists Raise $17K for Former Pastor Living Year 'Without God'Christian Post

all 27 news articles »

Raw Story
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson mistakes atheists for Satanists
Raw Story
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson was raked over the online coals on Tuesday for apparently conflating atheism with Satanism, just before one of her guests did the same. Tuesday morning, Carlson previewed a segment on the Satanist Temple's proposed ...

Atheist Church!
Patheos (blog)
Twice the boredom! None of the faith, hope, or love! Offering teens new horizons in moralistic tedium from adults who either don't know why they are there or are the sort of feverish fanatics that by age 25 the kids will have fled to Benedictine ...

New York Daily News
Atheist 'Pastafarian' Christopher Schaeffer Sworn Into New York Town Council ...
Huffington Post UK
However, atheism scored a small victory in the push back against the faithful last week with the swearing in of Christopher Shaeffer, a 'Pastafarian' minister who will now serve on the local town council of Pomfret in New York State. Schaeffer attended ...
New York Pastafarian Christopher Schaeffer Sworn Into Town Council Wearing ...Huffington Post
Some Guy Was Actually Sworn Into Political Office With a Pasta Strainer on His ...TheBlaze.com
Pastafarian Minister Sworn Into NY Town Council Wearing Spaghetti Strainer on ...Latino Post
Opposing Views
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