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The “Birther” delusion I’ve blogged about a couple times already, apparently has not died, even though it’s been as thoroughly debunked as anything can be. The occasion of the “Tea Party Convention” — a loose collection of paranoiacs, anarchists, and assorted other falling-off-the-cliff Rightists — has kicked up the (non-existent) controversy over President Obama’s birth. The Los Angeles Times Top of the Ticket blog reports on the persistence of this delusion (WebCite cached article):
Joseph Farah, to cheers at Tea Party Convention, again questions location of Obama’s birth
If the National Tea Party Convention hoped to keep its focus on political organizing and its message on limited government, it has had little success so far.
Capping the first full day of the meeting, right-wing instigator Joseph Farah spent much of his dinner speech questioning whether President Obama was born in Hawaii and casting doubt on whether the president was legitimately elected.
“The media, the politicians … all say, no, it’s all been settled. I say, if it’s been settled show us the birth certificate. Simple,” Farah’s said, as his remarks were cheered by the roughly 600 activists gathered in Nashville for the event.
If you don’t know who Joseph Farah is, consider yourself fortunate. You haven’t missed much, except for Farah’s insane religiofascist gibbering.
Farah runs WorldNetDaily.com, a conservative tabloid, book publisher and tireless critic of the administration. He dismissed those who say he is obsessed with the birth certificate issue saying, “I admit it, I’m obsessed with the Constitution.”
But Mr Farah, if you were truly “obsessed with the Constitution,” you would know that it says absolutely nothing whatsoever about birth certificates. Not one blasted thing! Farah, being a dutiful Religious Rightist, inserted a religious angle into his drivel:
Farah said he believed establishing lineage was important for leaders, using Jesus’ genealogical ties to King David as an example.
Mr Farah, if you know so much about the Bible, then surely you must know that the two genealogies of Jesus that are provided in the gospels, conflict with one another (cached article)! The truth about Jesus is that no one knows if he even existed; and even if he did, his genealogy is utterly unknown.
In any event, the matter of Obama’s birth has been settled. FactCheck has gone over the matter with a fine-tooth comb and has not found any problem with Obama’s citizenship (cached article). (For those who don’t like FactCheck, here’s Politifact’s article on the subject, along with a cached version.) The “birthers” who demand an “original” birth certificate in order to demonstrate Obama’s citizenship — and who say that only an “original” birth certificate will suffice — are legally incorrect. In some jurisdictions, it is not possible for a person ever to get an “original” birth certificate … it is the property of the recording agency, not the person, so the person cannot give it to anyone. If the “birthers” are to be believed, anyone born in such a place is automatically and forever barred from becoming president. This is, of course, totally asinine and childish. But then, “birthers” are not known for being bright or mature, so it’s to be expected, I guess.
An Equality Bill currently under consideration in the UK Parliament has a well-known critic: Pope Benedict XVI. Yes, that’s right. The Pope said that equality for all, is “unjust.” The BBC reports on the Pope’s remarks (WebCite cached article):
Pope Benedict attacks government over Equality Bill
The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK’s Equality Bill with “missionary zeal”.
Pope Benedict XVI said the legislation “violates natural law”. Supporters of the law see this as a wish to keep a ban on gay people in Church positions. …
He told the Catholic bishops of England and Wales gathered in Rome: “Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society.
“Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.
Basically the Pope is claiming that the Roman Catholic Church — and, one many assume, individual Catholics — possess a fundamental right to discriminate against gays, because their religious dogma despises them. But even worse than that, Benedict went beyond mere religious principles, in his attack on equal treatment of gays:
“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”
In other words, he is not merely saying that Catholic dogma condemns gays; he is saying that gays as a group fundamentally should not be allowed any equality.
I wonder what the Pope would think if I were a business owner and decided that it was against my principles — as the godless heathen agnostic that I am — to hire Catholics (or any other kind of believer). Would he consider that acceptable? Would he claim that I possessed this right to discriminate, as a “natural law”?
By the way, Benedict … have you gotten around yet to reprimanding the recently-restored Bishop Richard Williamson for having failed to obey your directive to retract his Holocaust denials? Unless you’re willing to deal with him, I’m not sure you have any credibility on the matter of morals, ethics, and “natural law.” Once you’ve taken care of the wayward members of your own flock, then we can sit down together and discuss how the UK deals with its own people. OK?
As if in agreement with my recent criticism of the state of journalism and the mass media … particularly in its staggering lack of anything resembling critical thinking or skepticism … Dean Burnett of the “Science Digestive” blog wrote some letters from “Science” to various other fields … beginning with the mass media. Here’s but a sampling:
Firstly, would it kill you to be a bit more specific when you tell people what I’m up to? The number of news stories I’ve read which end with “…say scientists” just drives me to distraction. And I can’t afford to be distracted, a lot of my work is quite delicate., some of it involves brains!
Do you realise how vague a term ‘Scientists’ is? It’s like ‘cars’, there are hundreds of different types. It might be accurate, but it’s not specific. You’d never say “‘Kill all homosexuals’, say religious people”. And I don’t blame you, there’d be uproar, but it’s basically the same thing. You’re not helping by grouping my lot together like that, they’re a very diverse bunch. Einstein and Pasteur were both Scientists, but only one has anything useful to say on the laws of relativity. …
This implication that ‘Scientists’ are all in agreement whenever a ‘breakthrough’ is made is gibberish. As a result, people think my lot are some shadowy cabal who meet once a month in order to decide what new rules we have to dictate to the general populace. I’ve tried telling them that they’re thinking of the Freemasons, not my lot, but to no avail. You’re the one who’s giving this impression, not me. Cut it out will you!Oh, by the way, this whole ‘balanced argument’ thing you’ve got going on. I see your point, but make your mind up! Either you present 2 sides to every argument or none, why is it just when it’s a controversy involving me! Yes, some people think that MMR and Autism are linked, some people think that Me and my guys would knowingly build a device capable of swallowing the planet with a black hole and turn it on just to see what happens. These people are wrong, you know they are, but they get to air their views anyway. When a murder is reported, do you get statements from the people who thought that the victim had it coming? Why not? If balanced arguments are so vital, why are some stories exempt? Come on mate, a bit of fairness is all I’m asking for.
Hello. Science here. Thought I’d better introduce myself, seeing as how we’ve never met. I know you like to give people the impression that you work closely with me, and that I’m somewhat envious of you so try to suppress you, but seeing as we both know the truth, I have to ask; Who are you and what do you want? …
I’ve noticed you do tend to talk and act like on of my team. Interesting, especially when you consider that the actual things you say are utterly bonkers. You’ve done no actual science of your own, so where do you get all your big words from? …
Just to point out, not everyone who disagrees with you is in league with ‘Big Pharma’. I’ll confess, the pharmaceutical companies aren’t exactly my finest hour. But in my defence, it was Business’ idea. I hung around with him for a while in the 80’s, and you know what he was like back then. I was lucky to get out with my fillings in place. I admit, I still work with him for Big Pharma. I could sever all ties with them, but then they’d have no actual medicine, and people would die. Imagine that, a multi-billion pound company, selling sick people medicine that doesn’t actually work! I could never live with myself. How much are your retailers worth, just out of interest?
How are you anyway? Not been seeing you around much lately. It wasn’t too long ago that you and Media were best mates, you were always together. I guess you didn’t confuse him like I do, despite your insane claims. But now he’s ditched you in favour of psychics and health gurus. …
Anyway, Astronomy asked me to write to you, largely because people keep getting him and you mixed up. I can see his problem, apart from the similar names and obsession with all things spatial; you guys have nothing in common. Oh, and stereotypically you are both advocated by socially awkward people with weird hair in long coats who speak in bizarre ways. …
So, if you could somehow make it clear that you and astronomy aren’t working together, that would be cool. He wants to know how things in Space work; you want people to think that things in space effect how we work. Can’t say I agree with that, but then if there are people out there who feel they need the arrangement of celestial bodies to govern how they live their lives then I guess they need all the help they can get, so fair enough.
Of course, this could be a simple oversight. Perhaps you know something I don’t, and your predictions are 100% accurate, but your proponents have not taken into account the light-speed factor. The stars we see in the night sky, their light is actually from anywhere between dozens to hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Maybe your predictions are completely true, but for people in the 3rd century? You might want to hook up with History and Archaeology, see if there’s something you can work out regarding this.
Burnett goes on, with letters “from Science” to “Dear Economics” and, perhaps most hilariously, to “dear Advertising.”
Burnett’s amusing delivery points out something which, really, is not all that funny: Not only has occidental culture — as a whole — forgotten what “science” really is, there are entire fields of study which have left it so far behind that they are basically antithetical to science. And these are fields which are becoming increasingly influential! We’re rapidly becoming dangerously anti-scientific (and anti-intellectual) at just the time when we should be embracing science and embracing humanity’s ability to learn and grow intellectually. Thanks to Dean Burnett for his brilliant send-ups.
Hat tip: Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait.
Things are looking stranger and stranger in the case of the Baptists who tried to take some children out of Haiti, about whom I’ve blogged a couple times. Not only were these not orphaned or abandoned children, it seems that, in some cases, the parents gave the children to them, in order to give them a free education. The New York Times reports on how the Baptists’ story grows increasingly disingenuous (WebCite cached article):
Guerlaine Antoine pushed aside a tub full of laundry, wiped her soapy hands on her T-shirt and rushed barefoot to bring out photos of the 8-year-old boy she entrusted to 10 American Baptists.
“Do you think I would give this child away?” she said, opening a grade school yearbook to show her son, Carl Ramirez Antoine, in cap and gown, at his kindergarten graduation. “He is my only treasure.” …
Kisnel and Florence Antoine said they sent two of their children with the Baptist missionaries because they had offered educational opportunities for the children in the Dominican Republic. Ketlaine Valmont said she had sent a son.
They showed school photos and academic awards to demonstrate that they had not selfishly sent their children away to lighten their load.
In a country where more than half of all children come from families too poor to keep them in school, the parents said that the Americans’ offer of an education seemed like a gift from heaven.
They also wanted to give opportunities for something better to their children. They said that the missionaries had promised they would be able to visit their children in the Dominican Republic, and that the children would be free to come home for visits.
At least these parents, then, were not giving up their child for adoption, just entrusting them to people who would educate them but still allow family visits. It’s clear, however, that the Baptists had planned to place these children for adoption:
The Americans said that the children had been orphaned in the earthquake, and that they had authorization from the Dominican government to bring the children into the country.
But it became clear on Tuesday that at least some of the children had not lost their parents in the earthquake.
So not only were these kids not orphaned or abandoned — and the Baptists knew this, because they had spoken with at least some of the parents — their claim of not planning to adopt them out, is also demonstrably untrue:
And while the Americans said they did not intend to offer the children for adoption, the Web site for their orphanage [WebCite cached version] makes clear that they intended to do so.
In addition to providing a swimming pool, soccer field and access to the beach for the children, the group, known as the New Life Children’s Refuge, said it also planned to “provide opportunities for adoption,” and “seaside villas for adopting parents to stay while fulfilling the requirement for 60-90 day visit.”
The reason these Haitian families were willing to trust these strangers with their children, is because a local minister vouched for them:
They trusted the Americans, they said, because they arrived with the recommendation of a Baptist minister, Philippe Murphy, who runs an orphanage in the area. A woman who answered the door at Mr. Murphy’s house said he had gone to Miami. But she also said that he did not know anything about the Americans.
It’s interesting, don’t you think, that a person as pivotal in all of this as the Rev Murphy, is somehow not to be found? Hmm.
It’s clear, at any rate, that this Baptist organization has told more than one lie to more than one person. This places them squarely among my “lying liars for Jesus” club.
It looks as though the military’s policy toward gays in its ranks … known popularly as “don’t ask, don’t tell” … will probably be changed to something less medieval (WebCite cached article). How soon is not known, as it’s only just being studied right now. But that doesn’t mean a ferocious culture war won’t be stirred up over it. The latest religious figure agitating against treating gays like equal human beings, is Jewish — Rabbi Yehuda Levin, to be exact (cached article):
Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America issued the following statement:
“When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it’s shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama’s kooky coalition.”
I honestly don’t get how treating gays in the military as regular human beings is “spiritual rape,” but the Rabbi appears adamant about it, even if his claim is irrational and nonsensical. He goes as far as to claim that the 9/11 terror attacks, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Haiti all happened because the New York City government chose to recognize “domestic partnerships” among city employees:
“Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.”
Alluding to the Chernonbyl disaster was also a wonderful touch. And no, I have no idea what “underground earthquake” he’s referring to … but I’m guessing he doesn’t know, either. Levin rages on like a child throwing a tantrum:
“We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.”
Well, Rabbi, I agree. You are right when you say, “enough is enough.” That is absolutely correct. Enough is, in fact, enough. Sanctimonious and militant religionists like you, Rabbi, have run the show for most of humanity’s c. 6,000 years of known history. And where has it brought us? To the point where childish little twits like yourself stamp and fume and scream and whine, because — God forbid! — some people you personally dislike (in this case, gays) might be treated the same as other human beings.
Again, Rabbi, I agree. You’re right. “Enough is enough.” It is long past time for you and your fellow religionists to finally grow the fuck up — for the first times in your collective little lives — and act like grown adults who are capable of actually living with other human beings — yes, even those you personally dislike. (I don’t personally like religionists such as yourself, Rabbi, but I’m not about to go around screaming for you to be given fewer rights than the rest of the country, just because I dislike your militant religionism!)
I’m also surprised that someone who’s Jewish is not, apparently, aware that it’s generally not a good idea to devalue another class of human beings, just because of who they are.
Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.
Not that it ever had much credibility to begin with, but the anti-vaccine movement — including those, like actress Jenny McCarthy, who insist that vaccines cause autism — has lost one of the very few pillars of support it ever had. CNN reports on an action taken by the British medical journal Lancet (WebCite cached article):
The medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday retracted a controversial 1998 paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism.
The 12-year-old study linked autism with the MMR vaccine. The research subsequently had been discredited.
While researchers have long known this paper had been flawed, the mere fact that Lancet had published it — and that it could still be referenced as having been in that prestigious journal — has lent the antivax movement more credibility than it deserved. But there are problems with it which could not be ignored, and the journal has taken action:
Last week, the study’s lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was found to have acted unethically in conducting the research.
The General Medical Council, which oversees doctors in Britain, said that “there was a biased selection of patients in The Lancet paper” and that his “conduct in this regard was dishonest and irresponsible.”
The panel found that Wakefield subjected some children in the study to various invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies and MRI scans. He also paid children for blood samples for research purposes at his son’s birthday party, an act that “showed a callous disregard” for the “distress and pain” of the children, the panel said.
As I said, that there had been problems with Wakefield’s study, is not news to the medical community. The most recent — and perhaps compelling — evidence of its flaws:
A September 2008 study replicated key parts of Wakefield’s original paper and found no evidence that the vaccine had a connection to either autism or GI disorders. The study, conducted at Columbia University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also found no relationship between the timing of the vaccine and children getting GI disorders or autism.
But the general public hasn’t been too aware of these problems, and the antivaxers have, of course, taken advantage of that:
The Wakefield study also became part of the evidence that parents cited who did not vaccinate their children.
“The story became credible because it was published in The Lancet,” Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, said Tuesday. “It was in The Lancet, and we really rely on these medical journals.”
Singer, the mother of a child with autism, added, “That study did a lot of harm. People became afraid of vaccinations — this is the Wakefield legacy — this unscientifically grounded fear of vaccinations that result in children dying from vaccine preventable diseases.”
Unfortunately the mass media does little to educate people on how science actually works. You see, the truth about science is that it can, and does, change its mind; studies that were printed even in prestigious journals can turn out to have been fraudulent, or incomplete, or their conclusions found incorrect, etc. Science is self-correcting. Since the Wakefield paper was published 12 years ago, medical science has accepted that it was wrong … but the public has been slow to find that out. Hopefully that will change.
Note to Jenny McCarthy, Bill Maher, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other antivaxers … please pay attention … !
Anyone out there who was concerned that the onset of the 21st century might have had the effect of diminishing primitive barbarism in the world, you may now breathe a sigh of relief. Thanks to entrenched hyperreligious thinking, including religiously-inspired hatred of women, primitive barbarism lives on! A 16-year-old girl in Bangladesh was punished for — get this! — having been raped and impregnated. The (UK) Guardian reports on this event (WebCite cached article):
Rape victim receives 101 lashes for becoming pregnant
A 16-year-old girl who was raped in Bangladesh has been given 101 lashes for conceiving during the assault.
The girl’s father was also fined and warned the family would be branded outcasts from their village if he did not pay.
According to human rights activists, the girl, who was quickly married after the attack, was divorced weeks later after medical tests revealed she was pregnant.
The girl was raped by a 20-year-old villager in Brahmanbaria district in April last year.
Note, it’s not uncommon for rape victims, anywhere in the world, to choose not to file a report. Of course, her living as she did in a society full of delusional, hyperreligious, wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth Islamist zealots, that probably only further discouraged her. But the Guardian goes on to add:
Her rape emerged after her pregnancy test and Muslim elders in the village issued a fatwa insisting that the girl be kept in isolation until her family agreed to corporal punishment.
Now, if you’re probably wondering what kind of horrific punishment was meted out to the rapist, if the victim had been whipped for having gotten pregnant. Well, not to worry. Those Muslim elders took care of him, all right:
Her rapist was pardoned by the elders.
Yes, indeed, they bestowed the kindness and loving-mercy of Islam on that rapist. I have to hand it to the self-proclaimed “religion of peace.” Boy, you sure kept “the peace” all right. You whipped a crime victim and pardoned a criminal. Why, I can think of no better way to keep the peace, than that!
All right, enough sarcasm. Does anyone finally see how truly demented religious thinking can be, if it’s not reined in by common sense?
Hat tip: Unreasonable Faith blog.
Although Egypt is a majority-Muslim nation, it has a significant Christian minority, which has been there for about as long as there have been Christians … Christians have been in Alexandria since the middle of the 1st century CE, and many early Christian document discoveries have been made in Egypt. Arguably the dominant Christian church of Egypt, known as the Coptic Orthodox Church, has a more continuous and older pedigree than the church of Rome. Even after the Muslim conquest of Egypt which took place c. 640 CE, Christianity has maintained a presence there. Depending upon whom you ask, between 10 and 20% of Egypt is Christian.
There has, of course, been trouble between religious groups in Egypt, through its history. Christians themselves were known to have committed some violence of their own (e.g. their butchering of Hypatia of Alexandria, the destruction of the Serapeum in the same city, etc.). It’s no surprise that some of that violence crops up in Egypt now and again.
Except that … if you listen to the Egyptian government anyway … it doesn’t happen, even when it does. The New York Times reports on this strange paradox (WebCite cached article):
A few weeks ago, on the day that Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas Eve, a Muslim gunman opened fire on worshipers as they walked out of church, killing 7, wounding 10 and leading to the worst sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in Egypt in years. In the days that followed, there were riots and clashes. Stores were wrecked. Homes were burned.
The government responded by sending in heavily armed police officers, banning the news media and insisting that the Jan. 6 attack was retaliation for a rape.
“There are initial indications connecting this incident to the consequences of accusing a young Christian man of raping a Muslim girl in one of the governorate’s villages,” the Interior Ministry said after the attack.
That’s right. This may have been religious violence, but it wasn’t religious violence. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowwhatImean?) The Egyptian government has tried to cover up the real story:
The one thing the government would not do was admit the obvious: Egypt had experienced one of the most serious outbreaks of sectarian violence in years. Instead, it said talk of sectarian conflict amounted to sedition.
But the evidence, provided in newspapers, was irrefutable: 14 Muslims arrested, 28 Christians arrested, Christian shops burned, Muslim houses burned.
“We are now facing a sectarian society and street,” wrote Amr el-Shoubky, a political analyst and columnist, in an article under the headline “The New Sectarianism: The Alienation of Christians,” which appeared in the daily newspaper Al Masry al-Youm.
Despite the fact that pretty much everyone knows what really happened, the government still will not change its tune:
“The crime of Nag Hammadi is just an individual crime with no religious motives, just like the crime of raping the girl,” Ahmed Fathi Sorour, the Parliament speaker, said in Al Ahram, a state-owned newspaper.
Egypt’s society may look homogeneous on the outside, but as the Times explains, it is — in reality — anything but homogeneous:
In daily life secular divisions can be subtle. People work together, study together, but then go their separate ways. The neighborhoods are integrated, but private lives are segregated. Tension grows as young men talk about cellphone videos showing Muslim girls with Christian boys, or as Christian parents complain that their children are forced to study the Koran in public schools.
The group outside the warehouse slowly acknowledged that there was little mingling in Nag Hammadi. “We are separated,” said Essam Atef, 32, a Christian who manages the pharmaceutical business. “If there is a wedding, you offer congratulations, and if there is someone sick, you might visit, but we are both on our own here.”
All the men agreed.
What the government of Egypt is doing, then, is just what Egyptian society does, itself, which is to “keep up appearances.” Society pays lip-service to the notion that Muslims and Christians get along well, but in truth, they’re segregated. In the same way, the government tries to make it seem as though there is no sectarian or religious strife, when in fact, it is most assuredly there.
Things are looking worse for the Baptist group based in Idaho which tried to abscond with some Haitian refugee children. The BBC now reports that not all the children’s parents are “missing” (WebCite cached article):
Haiti ‘orphans’ found with Americans may have parents
The Americans said the youngsters had all lost their parents in the quake.
But George Willeit, a spokesman in Port-au-Prince for SOS Children’s Villages, which is now looking after the children, says at least one of them, a little girl, said her parents were alive.
The children also apparently hadn’t been cared for very well, while the Baptists were trying to shuffle them out of Haiti:
Mr Willeit said many of the children had been found to be in poor health, hungry and dehydrated.
One of the smallest — just two or three months old — was so dehydrated she had to be taken to hospital, he added.
Haitian officials appear not to be taking this situation lightly:
“This is an abduction, not an adoption,” Haitian Social Affairs Minister Yves Christallin told AFP news agency.
The Baptist group is still in denial over this, claiming to have done nothing wrong:
The leader of the Idaho-based group, Laura Silsby, said the arrests were the result of a mistake.
“Our understanding was that we were told by a number of people, including Dominican authorities, that we would be able to bring the children across,” she said.
“The mistake we made is that we didn’t understand there was additional paperwork required.”
But as the BBC explains, it wasn’t even as simple as having missed a little bit of “additional paperwork”:
But the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, in Port-au-Prince, says the regulations are very clear — each case of child adoption must be approved by the government.
Even before the earthquake, he adds, child-smuggling was a massive problem in Haiti, with thousands of children disappearing each year.
Rules to prevent child-smuggling predated the earthquake, then, so anyone attempting to remove children from Haiti has no excuse for not knowing that government permission was required. As for their claim that the Dominican Republic approved their operation … I wasn’t aware that the D.R.’s government had any authority to decide whether Haitian children could leave their country. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see where that authority exists. Maybe the Baptists are aware of some rule to this effect, that I never heard of.
