You Pay, They Pray: National Day of Exploiting the Government to Promote Sectarian Christianity

Today is the National Day of Prayer, in which our country seems to assume that religious people are incapable of deciding on their own when and how and with whom to pray without the direction and support of a worldly government.

Via Pz Myers comes word of exactly the sort of thing that happens when secular power gets involved in the promotion of religion: inevitably, only certain religions need apply:

They are also required to only allow Christians to run the show: “I commit that [National Day of Prayer] activities I serve with will be conducted solely by Christians while those with differing beliefs are welcome to attend.”

Auldrich has remained true to her pledge. “It’s a Judeo-Christian observance, and people of other faiths who ask about participating are encouraged to set aside their own day of prayer,” Auldrich told This Week Online in 2006. In other words, if you are not an evangelical, you can go hold your worship somewhere else.

Somehow, religion in our country managed to limp along until President Truman officially declared a National Day of Prayer. Phew! But it seemed that religion was still in such bad shape that it eventually also needed legislative action in the form of Ronald Reagan’s more permanent Day of Prayer solution.

Happily, this must alleviated the problem for most religions. But, apparently, evangelical Christianity is still in such dire straits that it needs some extra-special head-patting attention from Caesar in order to get on with its faith business.

Jews on First says the true meaning of the Day of Prayer has been lost. “What began as President Truman’s declaration of a National Prayer Day for all Americans is now excluding and dividing us on religious lines,” the group said.

Seriously though: why would anyone have ever expected anything different from anything involving the political process? As the founders realized, the practice of government is all about factions fighting for worldly power. It is a process that is both inevitably corrupting and rather obviously unnecessary to the free exercise of religion.

Congressional nonsense on the order of things like National Broccoli Week is silly enough (as the first President Bush rightly realized) without the government presuming to have any role to play in religious matters as well.

Finally: My Own Expelled Review Extravaganza

So, I went to see Premise Media’s Expelled. I paid my way (though matinée), sat alone in an empty theater, and took notes. And now it’s finally time to parse things for your pleasure.

Just as a framing device, I’ll pose some questions as a way to setup and organize my thoughts about various aspects of the film.

I should also clarify at the outset that I’m going to be treating figures who speak unopposed throughout the movie, people like Steven Meyer, David Berlinski, and so on, as if they speak for the film. I think, given how the film played out, this is perfectly fair. They are in some ways more the voice of the film than Stein, who basically is there to nod along and agree with them, or prompt them with leading questions. Indeed, aside from the bookend footage of Stein traveling to meet them or speaking at Pepperdine, I could just as easily imagine the film’s credits listing Berlinski, Meyer, Sternberg, and others as the opinionated hosts interviewing Ben Stein and trying to convince him of their position.

Anyhow, off we go:

Eight Year Old Requests a Divorce. Seriously. And It Only Gets Worse

I’m not now and never have been a cultural relativist. When you measure the success of a society by the degree and wide availability of human happiness and liberty, as well as the avoidance of screwupedness, some cultural, political, and ethical structures fail to measure up.

And arranged marriages, particularly those that involve promising children (almost always girls) to adults… they just aren’t a good idea. In addition to the simple tragedy of coercing and constraining your children’s future and choices, there’s also just the deeply creepy aspect of it… something which recently found its most horrible expression in Yemen recently.

Simply put, some guy, allegedly with mental problems, forced his eight-year old daughter to “marry” a 30 year old man. Yemeni law apparently allows the arranged marriage of underage girls, but restricts sex “until she is ready or mature.” This restriction, unfortunately, didn’t stop her unrepentant “husband”:

Thamer is in jail now. “Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me,” he said. “But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it’s ok.”

What a gracious concession!

While Yemeni prosecutors are trying to line up charges against the two men involved in this scheme, the local laws on arranged marriage clearly demand some further examination.

Shatha Ali Nasser confirmed that item number 15 in Yemeni civil law reads that “no girl or boy can get married before the age of 15.” However, this item was amended in 1998 so parents could make a contract of marriage between their children even if they are under the age of 15. But the husband cannot be intimate with her until she is ready or mature,” said Nasser.“This law is highly dangerous because it brings an end to a young girl’s happiness and future fruitful life. Nojoud did not get married, but she was raped by a 30-year old man.”

And there’s nothing much more to say than that.

Florida Believers are Not Stupid, But the State Issuing the Liscence Plates Is

When it comes to defending science and rebutting creationist claptrap, biologist blogger PZ Myers is second to none. He’s rude, crude, and controversial, but by and large when it comes to debates over things like framing (i.e. “shut up, atheists, selling science would be easier without you”), I’m on his side. But not always. In his recent post on a proposal to offer cross-bearing “I believe” license plates in Florida, he steps over the line:

Look at it this way: the stupid people in Florida are going to be conveniently self-labeling themselves with the Mark of the Buffoon.

It almost makes me feel worse to know that if someone called him on it, he’d probably actually defend this language. I almost don’t want face how disappointing that would be.

Here’s the thing: I’m not a believer, and I spend a lot of time arguing against religious claims that I think are anything from pernicious to pathetic. But I don’t think believers are stupid: not even stupid to believe. As I argued, I’m in the skepticism game against bad ideas, bad arguments, even bad people. But belief isn’t itself an argument: it doesn’t even always claim to be supported by arguments, good or bad. So I just can’t justify the attitude of someone who runs around calling believers qua believers stupid, or saying that by wearing their belief on their sleeves that they are marking themselves as buffoons.

This isn’t about Myers inconveniently “mis-framing” some issue. He’s just wrong.

And it muddles the issue. The problem with these plates is not at all what they say, but where they say it. It’s simply yet another example of the government trying to get into the message business (and the especially dicey religious message business) when there’s simply no need or justification for it.

Citizens are perfectly capable of decorating their cars with messages about their religious convictions, political party, opinions on world peace, and attitudes towards fat chicks. They simply do not require, in any way shape or form, the aid of the government in expressing their views. Government issued materials should be strictly functional: serving some legitimate regulatory purpose and then getting out of the way. They have no business being promotional, and certainly not promotional for just one religion.

In the case of Florida, this has gotten particularly pernicious, because while there are many different plate designs to choose from, the range of messages allowed by no means open forum. Each design must be approved by the state legislature: i.e. politicians rule on what messages they like or don’t like. And the process for citizens to even nominate a design is both arduous and expensive, with a $60,000 application fee on top of market research costs and so on.

And while most of the selections are relatively banal, there’s an unavoidably political and sectarian slant to the selections. There’s the notorious “Choose Life” plate (I don’t see any corresponding pro-choice plate), and if the current lawmakers have their way, things like “In God We Trust” and the Christianity-themed “I Believe” will soon follow. The closest comeback to any of these I can see the is ambiguous John Lennon “Imagine” plate.

But even that’s sort of beside the point. If the range of plates really was wide and free enough to encompass all sorts of different messages, I’d still oppose this sort of thing. There’s just no reason for the government to play this game. Space on cars for promotional messages is hardly at a premium. Dull license plates are hardly a high price to pay for a government that knows its place, and leaves expression wholly up to the people, rather than trying to get in on the game.

Why “Where is the ACLU??” Often Ends in Intellectual Tragedy (Islamic School Edition)

The ACLU is not a perfect organization (though given that they are not monolithic, it’s hard to generalize). But by and large, they have the right idea about religious liberty, especially when it comes to preventing governments from superseding the rights of citizens to observe or not observe whatever religion they see fit and protecting private religious expression from government interference.

Unfortunately, there are a whole host of (mostly) conservative bloggers out there who seem incapable of distinguishing government action from private freedoms, and who rather ridiculously assert that the ACLU is out to destroy religious practice, rather than protect it from the government. Of course, the big problem for such people is simply all the rather awkward evidence to the contrary. What’s a crank conspiracy-theorist to do?

Well, luckily, they’ve hit upon a stopgap defense mechanism: anytime they come across a potential infringement of free speech or religious expression, an regardless of how much time has elapsed, whether anyone has even notified the ACLU, what the actual facts of the case are, or even if some other organization is already providing counsel, they cry “Where is the ACLU?!!” The implication is, of course, that the ACLU is deeply hypocritical: that their conspiracy isn’t savvy enough to at least pretend to care about this or that free speech/religious expression issue.

The problem is that this rallying cry so often ends in embarrassing tragedy. The latest case in point involves an Islamic school, sponsored by the government, which has apparently been caught coercing its students to pray, amongst other things. Part-time culture-warrior William Wallace raised the predictable cry: Where is the ACLU Now?

Where is the ACLU? The ACLU was all over the Dover PA school district for merely suggesting that life might have been designed by some unidentified creator as a violation of the so-called separation of of church and state. But here in Minnesota, it is “halal” (kosher) to fund Islamic schools.

This righteous outrage lasted for precisely one day, until a commenter happened to stop by and link to a letter from the ACLU to the school, asking them to stop exactly the practices that Mr. Wallace was complaining about. Oops.

And if that weren’t ridiculous enough, the letter is nearly a month old. So it’s Mr. Wallace that’s late to game in condemning the school: the ACLU might well have run their own blog entry entitled “Where is William Wallace on this issue, hunh?!?”

Mr. Wallace’s response?

The letter you cite is very interesting, in that is very friendly. It is as though the ACLU wants to teach the school how to continue to be a public Islamic school.

I’ll analyze the letter in more detail later; might make for an interesting blog.

This is what’s known as “changing the goalposts.” First the ACLU was evil because it was supposedly ignoring the controversy as part of some crafty plot to promote Islam and destroy Christianity. But when that implication became both ridiculous and even anachronistic, suddenly the ACLU is instead bad because their letter warning the school to stop its unconstitutional religious endorsement doesn’t call Muslims enough racial slurs in the process, or something.

I almost can’t wait for Mr. Wallace’s ‘analysis,’ but I suspect it may be delayed until he finds some means to remove the egg from his face.

More: If you’re interested in a vastly more sane analysis of the Islamic Charter School issue, Hemant over at Friendly Atheist has the goods.

The 4th Wave of Creationism: Guerrillas for God

As Ed Brayton at Dispatches notes, we now have at least six US state legislatures that are either considering or have already passed so called “academic freedom” bills: Louisiana, Missouri, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama. In various forms, they all claim to protect teachers from any repercussions for teaching what they term “scientific weaknesses with evolution.” The insincerity of this sudden concern for “academic freedom” is obvious, given that the bills do not protect teachers from teaching children about, say, birth control or 9/11 conspiracy theories. Only the usual stalking horse of conservative creationists is fair game for fifth-grade science teachers.

With so many similar bills appearing in such a short time, all with such similar language and intent, it’s pretty clear that we’re seeing a new phase of in creationist efforts to attack evolution in public school science class. For those unfamiliar, the first three main phases have been Creationism proper, Scientific Creationism, and Intelligent Design, all as outlined in this Dispatches post. The phases have all overlapped to some extent (most obviously in the recycling of many of the same arguments), and advocates of prior phases all remain, though often strategically friendly to the newest effort. But this 4th phase doesn’t go under any sort of banner or title: and that, in fact, is the whole point.

Eight-Year-Old Sniffs Marker: All Hell Breaks Loose

Zero Tolerance has struck again: eight-year-old Eathan Harris was recently suspended for the dastardly crime of realizing that Sharpie markers smelled sort of neat.

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

Well, they could have just told him. They could have just told him that it was a dumb idea, like sticking your pencil up your nose. Instead, they reacted as if he had been caught downing a malt liquor.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”

Really? And what do the experts say about this fear?

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

So, the voice of reason has spoken. The principal’s fears were unfounded, and given that his harsh treatment was based on those fears… oh, who are we kidding:

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center’s medical opinion. “Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s a very serious marker,’” Benisch said.

Yes, people do indeed get called to make decisions on their best judgment. But sometimes they are wrong. And maybe, in those cases, it would be nice to, maybe, correct the judgment after the fact, or apologize, don’t you think?

Nah…

I still find it amazing that we still live in a world in which people can happily, and without automatically feeling like fools, be unfazed by reality. And watch out folks: because that marker means business.

Note: Emphasis added to quotes. Emphasis is nearly always added. By me. In fact, if there is every emphasis that I didn’t add, how about I tell you THAT instead.

Bigoted Illinois Representative Blows Up at Separation of Church and State

You may remember atheist activist Rob Sherman from the Illinois moment of silence controversy I blogged about way back when. Fresh from victory on that score, Sherman has most recently been challenging some shady grants to a church and school by the state’s governor.

And that’s how he ended up testifying before the Illinois State Legislature, during which Democratic Representative Monique D. Davis took the time to work herself into a ranting fit. Hemant over at the Friendly Atheist and Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune have the full quotes, along with audio of the exchange. But suffice to say that things like demanding to know why Sherman has something “against God” telling him that he’s attempting to destroy the state, and saying “what you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous… to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!” is not exactly the height of legislative decorum.

There isn’t enough context to know if Sherman said something previously that provoked the outburst, but there’s simply no question that Representative Davis’ stated remarks are both ignorant and reflect the usual bigotry towards atheists and those who simply want to keep the government out of religious matters.

More importantly though, they are deeply revealing about the deeply confused manner in which many people approach issues concerning religion in both government and civil society. Look at this statement, for instance:

Davis: Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Forget for a second the absurd red herring about Sherman’s opinions on guns (in any case, I have no idea what he believes the best gun policies are with regards to keeping them out of the hands of children, and I very much doubt Representative Davis had any idea either.) What can she possibly mean accusing Sherman of fighting against the opportunity for kids to be quiet “for a minute?”

What Sherman originally opposed was making a moment of silence, ostensibly to provide a special time for silent prayer, a mandatory requirement for the school day in every public school in Illinois. At no point did he challenge the rights of teachers to make kids be quiet as needed to conduct class (or even voluntarily have a moment of silence at the start of class if they choose). Nor did he challenge the right of kids to be “quiet for a minute,” which they are perfectly capable of choosing to do on their own already (just as teachers are already perfectly capable of disciplining them if they won’t shut up during class time).

So how warped does her thinking on this issue have to be to actually characterize the state forcing something on children and classrooms as an “opportunity?” That’s like saying that when the state rescinds a law forcing businesses to close on Sundays, that it has stripped them of the opportunity to do so. Nonsense. Taking away the opportunity to remain open on a Sunday (or to not observe a moment of silence) is simply not the same thing as providing people with opportunities to close (or observe moments of silence whenever and with whomever they choose). They can do those things on their own just fine, again, if they choose to do so.

Davis’ real problem is that people aren’t voluntarily choosing to do what she wants them to do. Which is exactly where her own presumptuous demands come into the picture. It’s only through a bizarre bit of self-delusion that she’s able to think of herself as liberating the very people she’s actually demanding rigid compliance from.

This sort of backwards thinking is unfortunately quite common amongst critics of secular government. It sometimes seems as it religious people are so bizarrely fixated on having religious endorsements on government land, or direction to pray, and so on, that they completely forget that they are already free to do all these things themselves, on their own time, dime, and land.

Update: Davis does the right thing and apologizes. It’s still not clear that anything in her thinking about prayer in school and so forth has been clarified, or if she’s just apologizing for lashing out at someone in particular.

Florida Creationists Want a License to Lie, Egged on by Ben Stein’s Expelled!

Florida Republican creationists, hot of their self-bamboolzement in the recent science standards debate, are now attempting to pass a bill that purports to defend academic freedom in public high schools. Lawmakers are even getting a special (closed to the public!) screening of Intelligent Design agitprop doc Expelled! to help them “consider the issues.”

But just what is the bill in question, and what does it do?

Sorry Spitzer, Can’t Help Ya’ There: NY Governor “Escorted” Off to Political Oblivion

I’m with Kevin Drum: I don’t think prostitution/escortism should be illegal, or is necessarily always a bad thing (though it can very often be part of bad things). But if you’re going to make a career of putting people in jail for a particular victimless crime, then I don’t have a lot of sympathy left when you get caught committing it.

Like Cindy McCain and her prescription drug abuse, I imagine the trajectory here will be the usual one for rich and connected folks who commit crimes: they face daunting “personal problems” that are all very tragic but ultimately make them into better people as they overcome them with the help of friends and family. Meanwhile, those that earn less than 50,000 a year don’t have the luxury of celebrity tell-all pathos: they’re simply locked up in jail without so much as a tearful interview on 60 minutes or even a stint at a rehab resort.

The penalties for “johns” aren’t particularly high, and Spitzer has likely only ruined his career instead of his life as a free man, but there’s certainly as much poetic irony here as all the anti-gay politicians who ended up being on the “down low.”

Update: Randy Balko points out the amusing insanity of right-wing bloggers piling on to condemn and celebrate Spitzer’s downfall: all of them a virtual mirror image of Spitzer’s own contradictory stand. They’ve spent years defending Republican politicians who had procured prostitutes like David Vitter, only to turn around and suddenly discover that hiring an escort demands an immediate resignation. How can even a conservative blogger of the year justify this scatterbrained stance? Why the inconsistency?

Shut up, that’s why.

Illinois Mandatory Moment of Silence Gets Defanged: Still Silly

Hemant over at Friendly Atheist has the scoop: after last November’s court injunction against the law, Illinois legislators are now backing down from their stance requiring mandatory statewide moments of silence.  The new bill also essentially strips out all mention of prayer and religious need, although it retains the for “such silent reflection as may be desired by each individual pupil” bit.  Hemant calls this a “step in the right direction,” and he’s right, but this last phrase still implies the exact same confused reasoning I’ve always objected to in these measures.

Namely, if an individual pupil desires a time of silent reflection, why does he/she require any special accommodation at all?  Nothing is stopping them from having a time of silent reflection (or a really loud reflection if they desire!) prior to and outside of class time.  They can do it with any group of people they desire (as in the See You At the (Flag)pole events), as long as they want, as religiously as they want.  The point is that the state has no reason and no business to be granting people special rights and accommodations that they can already have without involving other non-interested people.  The point is that students have no need of government aid or direction to observe silent, or any other kind, of reflection.  So why is the government purporting to play a role in this at all?

In any case, the remnants of this sort of foolishness left in the bill aren’t worth getting worked up over, but it never ceases to amaze me how people can be so blind to their own religious freedoms that instead of just exercising them, they petition the government to help them exercise them, or even more absurdly (as in the original prayer in schools cases): to order citizens to help observe them.

Corporate Death Sentence for Enzyte, the “Natural Male Enhancement” Scam

You’ll never have to sit through another “Smiling Bob” commercial again: Enzyte maker Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals and it’s President have been busted on everything from mail fraud to money laundering.

Some former employees, including relatives of Warshak, pleaded guilty to other charges and cooperated with prosecutors. They testified that the company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer-satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

Just another reason not to trust the claims of those shilling “herbal supplement” and other such products which have no independently proven results. What’s unfortunate here is that BPN only got caught because they flagrantly abused things like their money-back guarantee (not only would they not give people’s money back, but they would apparently keep quietly charging customers’ credit cards for non-existent purchases). Meanwhile, countless other companies who manage not to blatantly steal things from their customers outright will continue with their snake oil scams without any fear of prosecution for their bogus claims.