Miscellanea Agnostica

As if we needed the legal system to say it — the science of the matter speaks for itself, even if the antivaxers say it doesn’t — a special federal court has (again!) ruled that there is no link between autism and vaccines. CNN reports on this (WebCite cached article):

A federal court ruled Friday that the evidence supporting an alleged causal link between autism and a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines is unpersuasive, and that the families of children diagnosed with autism are not entitled to compensation.

Special masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims released more than 600 pages of findings after reviewing three test cases and finding all the claims wanting.

“Petitioners’ theory of vaccine-related causation is scientifically unsupportable,” wrote Special Master Patricia Campbell-Smith in her conclusion about William P. Mead, whose parents, George and Victoria Mead, had brought one of the suits.

This is not the first time this special court has shot down the antivax position:

In February 2009, the court’s special masters concluded that the evidence supporting a link between measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, or MMR, combined with thimerosal-containing vaccines, was also unpersuasive.

That prior ruling is being appealed, and one can assume the tinfoil hat-wearing antivax crowd will do the same in this case, so this hardly ends the matter. And to be honest, the courts are not scientific authorities … they are merely legal authorities … so these rulings do not “prove” that vaccines don’t cause autism. (Actually, that has already been proven scientifically.) What they do show is that every time a serious review of the issue is conducted, the decision always ends up being the same … that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Yes, you read that headline correctly. This is not a joke. It’s deadly serious. The reactionary, Religious Right-led Texas Board of Education has just ordered Thomas Jefferson, one of the most important of the Founding Fathers, from the Texas social-studies curriculum. The Texas Freedom Network has been at the proceedings and reported on this live, as it happened (WebCite cached article):

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

TFN has even more to say on this:

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

9:51 – Dunbar’s amendment striking Jefferson passed with the votes of the board’s far-right members and board member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller of Dallas.

This is just unbe-fucking-lievable. Have these people no shame? They’re so desperate to promote their religionism in Texas schools that they have written out mention of “the Enlightenment” and of Thomas Jefferson, in favor of Thomas Aquinas!

Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.

A high-ranking Roman Catholic exorcist claims that the Devil is alive and well in the Vatican, and that recent scandals result from it. The (UK) Times reports on this apparent revelation (WebCite cached article):

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”. …

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Not everyone is impressed, and a Catholic priest interviewed for the story denied Fr Amorth’s claim:

Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth had “gone well beyond the evidence” in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.

“Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God,” he said. Some Vatican officials were more pious than others, “but from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of satanic sects is an unacceptable distance.”

I’m no fan of the Roman Catholic Church, it’s true, so the allegation that the Devil is there and is to blame for its recent problems, is one I find amusing, to say the least. That said, I also happen to be no fan of people who — on the cusp of releasing a memoir, some other book, or a movie, etc. — make some kind of eye-catching, outrageous claim or other, in order to increase sales. To say that I take Fr Amorth’s claim with a grain of salt, is putting it mildly.

OK, so perhaps this is not news, in predominantly-fundamentalist thinking, majority-Mormon Utah. But a law was passed there, and signed by the state’s governor, which effectively pushes the state backward in time, closer to the Dark Ages than it had been previously. The New York Times reports on this development (WebCite cached article):

The origins of Utah State House Bill 12 lie in an act of dark and desperate violence.

Last May in a small town in eastern Utah, a 17-year-old girl, seven months pregnant, paid a man she had just met $150 to beat her up in hopes of inducing a miscarriage that would resolve her crisis. He obliged, taking her to a basement and kicking her repeatedly in the stomach.

The fetus survived the assault and was born in August. The attacker went to jail. And the girl, whose name was never released because she was under age, became the center of a legal debate — and the piece of legislation now awaiting the governor’s signature or veto. The bill would formally criminalize what she did, that is, to seek an illegal abortion.

This law effectively raises the possibility that any woman who has a miscarriage, might be prosecuted:

“Prosecutors have a lot of discretion, and miscarriage is a sad but common event in connection with pregnancy,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group for birth control and abortion rights. “This bill would cast suspicion, potentially, on every single miscarriage.”

Almost any kind of activity might be deemed sufficiently “negligent” or risky, to justify prosecuting a woman who miscarries … even if she did not intend for the miscarriage to occur, and even if she had no reservations about her pregnancy.

The effort here, as usual, is not to protect the unborn, as the law’s proponents claim. It is, instead, to reduce women of childbearing age to second-class citizens, whose legal rights, freedom and even their lives are compromised by the fact that they might become pregnant and thus have their actions limited by law or be prosecuted for doing nearly anything. Christians — especially of the Religious Right and Roman Catholic varieties — do not view women as “equal persons,” and laws such as this are their intended means of getting the inequality they worship enshrined in the US legal system, which otherwise affords women civil-rights protections (such as equality before the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment among other places).

In a development which — unfortunately — I don’t find surprising in the least, religious leaflets being distributed in Virginia are blaming the victims of rape for the crimes committed against them. The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier reports on this (WebCite cached article):

Blame the victim: Religious leaflet claims ‘ungodly’ dressed women provoke rape

Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.

“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.” …

Minutes later, Canter’s mother, Pam Yates, who owns the restaurant, returned from the bank. Canter handed her “Women & Girls” and Yates started reading.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

In the eyes of religionists like this, crimes like rape are not the result of sociopathic thinking or criminal behavior. They are, instead, compulsions forced on unwitting men by their wily and wicked victims — sort of like invisible puppet-strings. Blaming the victim for crimes is not new, and it’s not even always religiously-motivated … but when it’s rationalized by religion, that tends to prevent people from seeing how invalid this sort of thinking is.

Note also how eerily similar this is to the mindset behind the Catholic Church’s approach to handling the abuse of children by its clergy, as I blogged previously: “It’s the kids’ fault … they — and the Devil within them — made me do it!”

Taken to its extreme, this kind of thinking leads to customs such as compelling women to shroud themselves entirely in a burqa, or even preventing them from going out in public at all, as was common in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. This robs women of any sense of identity or individuality and reduces them to the level of mere property.

Hat tip: iReligion Forum at Delphi Forums.

I’ve always wondered why the government never goes after physics for being frauds. It seems pretty obvious that they can’t do what they say they can do. I guess the government figures people who believe in psychic powers get whatever they deserve, for it. But NPR reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission is going after a psychic who claims to be able to foresee markets and investments (WebCite cached article):

SEC Sues Psychic For Securities Fraud

“I have called ALL the highs and lows of the market, giving EXACT DATES for rises and crashes over the last 14 years,” Sean David Morton allegedly wrote in a newsletter back in 2006. …

So Morton managed to raise $6 million from investors, according to a lawsuit the SEC filed today accusing him of securities fraud.

According to the SEC:

Morton claimed that he would use his psychic expertise to provide investment guidance to his investing team, and falsely touted his historical success in psychically predicting the various rises and falls of the market. … However, Morton lied to investors about his past successes, and about key aspects of the Delphi Investment Group …

It’s about time a psychic was called to account for making fraudulent claims.

Hat tip: Consumerist.

You’d think that religious fundamentalists would have more to worry about, at the moment, than the tragic death of Sea World Orlando orca trainer Dawn Brancheau at the hands of orca Tilikum (WebCite cached article). But you’d be wrong to think so. The militant Christians at the American Family Association have decided to weigh in on the matter, and decided that — had scripture been obeyed, as they read it — Brancheau would still be alive. They posted the following on their own blog (cached article):

Bible ignored, trainer dies

You are aware by now that a 12,000 pound killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau yesterday by pulling her into a pool and dragging her around until she drowned, in front of a crowd of stunned guests.

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture. …

The Sentinel then recounts that Tilly, as he was affectionately known, had killed a trainer back in 1991 in front of spectators at a now defunct aquarium in Victoria, British Columbia.

Then in 1999 he killed a man who sneaked into SeaWorld to swim with the whales and was found the next morning draped dead across Tilly’s back. His body had been bit and the killer whale had torn off his swimming trunks after he had died. …

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28) …

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

(Links to scriptural citations in the NASB added by me, they were not provided by the AFA. They used the ESV, it appears.)

After dispensing its bizarre theological pronouncements, the AFA proceeds to dispense ersatz legal advice to Brancheau’s family:

If I were the family of Dawn Brancheau, I’d sue the pants off SeaWorld for allowing this killer whale to kill again after they were well aware of its violent history.

As if I actually believe the AFA is truly concerned about the surviving family. Have we finally figured out how pathetic these creatures (i.e. fundamentalist Christians like those at the AFA, not the orca) are?

Lots of people remain fuzzy on the “separation of church and state” thing in the US. By “lots of people,” I mean — of course — religionists who wish to use the government to promote their religion and who consider SOCAS to be a violation of their religious freedom. (To them, “religious freedom” means the power and authority to force everyone to follow their religion; if they are ever prevented from doing that, they see it as a reduction of their “religious freedom.”) The Hartford Courant reports on a Connecticut case which reached the US Supreme Court (WebCite cached article):

U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Change Order to Remove Religious Materials

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand an appellate ruling last summer that settled a dispute in Manchester involving government and religion.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered a small, church-operated post office in Manchester to clear its postal counter of religious materials such as prayer cards and a collection box supporting an outreach mission among the poor. The ruling was limited to the small, storefront post office on Main Street operated, under contract with the United States Postal Service, by the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church. …

The Main Street post office in Manchester is a Contract Postal Unit, one of 5,000 mostly small operations around the country in which the postal service contracts with private parties to sell postal products, rent post office boxes and collect mail. There are contract offices in private homes, gas stations, groceries, seminaries and hardware stores. Several are operated by faith-base [sic] organizations, the appellate court said.

What fierce religionists — who want to use government to promote their religion — don’t realize is that religious liberty overall is fostered, rather than hindered, by government remaining neutral, where religion is concerned. They don’t really care about anyone’s religious liberty but their own.

I’ve blogged before on Bishop Richard Williamson, who — along with the rest of his cohorts in the formerly schismatic Society of St Pius X — had reentered the fold of Roman Catholicism. It was about a year ago that the Vatican came under fire for having readmitted him (along with the rest of the SSPX), without realizing he was a Holocaust denier. Ultimately the Vatican chose to order him to take back his Holocaust denials. But, as Der Spiegel reports, even a year later, he has not yet done so (WebCite cached article):

Bishop Williamson Unrepentent in Holocaust Denial

Controversial Bishop Richard Williamson continues in his denial of the Holocaust, embarrassing both the Society of St. Pius to which he belongs and the Vatican. But the SSPX is becoming increasingly powerful despite the controversy and is attracting more and more supporters. …

The world has become a smaller place for the notorious bishop. Since he denied the existence of the Holocaust on television more than a year ago, causing serious problems for Pope Benedict XVI and almost triggering a revolt against Rome by the Catholic faithful, the ultra-conservative SSPX has kept him in virtual quarantine at its Wimbledon headquarters. Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the SSPX, likens Williamson to uranium: “It’s dangerous when you have it,” he says, but you can’t “simply leave it by the side of the road.”

Fellay knows what he is talking about. Williamson has no intention of revising his views on the gas chambers. When Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld sent him a book about the history of the Holocaust last year, he set it aside, unread. “The fact is that the 6 million people who were supposedly gassed represent a huge lie,” he wrote recently to his fellow members of the SSPX, noting that “a completely new world order was built” on this “fact.” The Jews, he added, “became ersatz saviors thanks to the concentration camps.”

Note carefully this last sentence, which reveals the theological source of Williamson’s denials: “The Jews became ersatz saviors thanks to the concentration camps.” (Emphasis mine) Obviously Williamson thinks that Jesus’ exclusive status as “savior” will be compromised by admitting the Holocaust occurred.

Folks, this is scary stuff. Really scary. However, the cat is now out of the bag … we can see, now, why there are Christians in the occidental world who so vehemently object to admitting the Holocaust occurred. (Of course, this does nothing to explain Holocaust denialism in the Islamic world … but that’s another matter entirely.)

One final question remains, which is why the Roman Catholic Church has yet to discipline Williamson for his disobedience (i.e. not taking back his Holocaust denials, after he was ordered to do so). That they have done nothing about this shows their lack of integrity as an organization, at best. If they wish to present themselves as a beacon of morality in the world, they’re going to have to do a better job of it than they have, and since we all know that “charity begins at home,” they need to start by forcing their own to behave morally.

Hat tip: Rogues Gallery blog at the New England Skeptical Society.

Concerning the starved toddler case I referred to just a few days ago, and I’ve blogged about previously: Verdicts are in. The AP reports via MSNBC (WebCite cached article):

The leader of a household that authorities described as a religious cult was convicted Tuesday along with two other people of starving a 1-year-old boy to death because he did not say “Amen” during a mealtime prayer.

Jurors convicted the leader, Queen Antoinette, 41, of second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in the death of Javon Thompson, who was 15 or 16 months old when he died in December 2006 or January 2007.

Antoinette’s daughter, Trevia Williams, 22, and another follower, Marcus A. Cobbs, 23, were also found guilty of second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. Cobbs was also convicted of accessory after the fact.

This result was not improbable, given the defendants represented themselves:

Antoinette, Williams and Cobbs represented themselves at trial. They did not testify or call any witnesses. Antoinette introduced a single piece of evidence: a copy of a handwritten application for nonprofit status for her organization, 1 Mind Ministries. In that document, she described herself “as a chosen daughter of the most high God and a queen of Jesus Christ.”

In their closing arguments, Antoinette and Cobbs accused prosecutors and the media of conspiring to condemn them.

“We’ve been like pariahs,” Antoinette said. “These people want to blame someone for this child’s death, so they’ve chosen us.”

So little Javon Thompson dropped dead all by himself after wasting away for days … but not because you wanted him starved and because he was never fed? Got it. Makes no sense to me, but I got it.