The Radula

Christmas is Creepy

2009-12-09T16:52:00.001-08:00

My daughter turned me on to this video. I had to share.

It's that time again:

2009-12-07T17:51:00.000-08:00

The holiday T-Shirts are available at Dorid Designs.

This year we not only have the Squidmas shirt, also have a pirate Christmas T:

Of course this could go for ANY religion...

2009-12-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

From RussellsTeapot.com

2009-12-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

Last year's Christmas Comic. Why didn't I know about this last year?

(click to see full sized)

Russell's Tea Pot

Shameful, Sinful, Christmas Trees: I haz one.

2009-12-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

But the kitties and the puppies lovez it so much!

Jeremiah 10:2-4 (New King James Version)

2 Thus says the LORD:
“ Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
4 They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.

Since when did Christmas become a celebration of ignorance and intolerance?

2009-12-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

Oh, it's that time again.

I'm ready for my holiday rant against the ignorant fundamentalist Christians who are out there continuing the war on Truth, because they can't tell the difference between Faith and Fact, even though their own scripture spells it out absolutely in Hebrews 11:1.

Rather than continue to get myself worked up over the exclusionist self righteousness of these individuals though, I'll just say a few other words for them to consider... words that they will dismiss out of hand because they can't acknowledge any other possibilities:

Kwanza, Ramadan, Chanukah, Diwali.

Jesus isn't the reason for the season, even symbolically, for many people around the world.

Increasingly, this has become the face of Christmas in the US:

If, as Christian Scripture says, you know the tree by it's fruit, I'd say the fruits that come out at Christmas time label the tree of Christianity all too clearly.

Bloggers these days are heavily opining on their religion as the celebration of the birth of Jesus draws closer. I've noticed a distinct lack of "political correctness", because these individuals seem to feel that they're doing some great work by disrespecting or disregarding other cultures or belief systems, while becoming greatly offended at having their own faith challenged.

The problem here comes in, as always, with the confusion of faith and fact. Once someone stops using "faith" to describe their unsupported views and uses "fact", which is reserved for supported or proven views, then they become unable to embrace reality, and must ignore or deny any empirical evidence, any argument, any doubt that contradicts their belief system.

This time of year we have a whole lot of people declaring other people "ignorant" who don't believe, who don't accept a 2000+ year old book of tales as the guideline for human behavior, who refuse to believe the evidence of their eyes and science over the whims of the heart or some sentimental longing for a father figure or a rescuer. The problem is, at Christmas more than ever, fundamentalists are blinded to who is really ignorant, and need to be taking the log out of their own eyes before they discuss what they perceive to be a mote in the others.

New From Pat Condell:

2009-11-30T20:09:00.001-08:00

More on the Freedom From Religion Billboards

2009-11-24T16:22:00.001-08:00

This from Channel 13 News (which is pretty right leaning) Of course, Channel 13 hasn't covered the religious billboards in the city. Just another sign of the bias...

So far we have 10 signs in Albuquerque according to examiner.com:

9712 Central Ave. SE, east of Moon
8910 Central Ave., west of Unser
701 Comanche NE, west of I-25
4600 Coors SW, south of Gun Club
1712 Eubank NE, south of Indian School
9700 Fourth Street NW, north of Alameda
500 Juan Tabo NE, north of Central, south of I-40
11515 Menaul NE, west of Chelwood at carwash
412 San Mateo NE, east side of San Mateo
6144 Second St. NW, south of Osuna

I find it rather amusing that the religious are most up in arms over the "Praise Darwin" poster. Let's face it. We praise our kids, praise our dog when it's obedient, and sing the praises of the products we use every day.

praise |prāz|verb [ trans. ]express warm approval or admiration of : we can't praise Chris enough—he did a brilliant job.• express one's respect and gratitude toward (a deity), esp. in song : we praise God for past blessings.nounthe expression of approval or admiration for someone or something : the audience was full of praise for the whole production.• the expression of respect and gratitude as an act of worship : give praise to God.PHRASESpraise be archaic used as an expression of relief, joy, or gratitude.sing the praises of express enthusiastic approval or admiration of (someone or something) : Uncle Felix never stopped singing her praises.

It's NOT about worship... but the religious right is looking for a reason to be offended.

Chin up you YouTube Atheists

2009-11-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Greg Laden and Wolverine for posting this... pass it on.

Tis the Season

2009-11-23T04:46:00.000-08:00

fa la la la la...

Um, is it just me, or is ABC family starting it's Christmas movies early this year? I used to love the 25 days 'till Christmas movies. I'm a sucker for that story where Santa's son has to take over, but first has to find a wife. I like that new one... Snowglobe... but there are some I really loathe: Christmas in Handcuffs and Twice Upon a Christmas are among the worst. But the very worst, the one I hate more than any other, is A Christmas Story.

But it's all part of the holiday season, and I can skip a few bad movies for all the gooey Christmas goodness.

Except... enough is enough.

25 days of Christmas movies is a good thing. 35 days is overkill. This isn't the first year of ABC's countdown to the countdown to Christmas. It's just the year when it finally got to me. Three days of Elf is also a bit much.

I'd like to see more time spent on some of the other Christmas movies and specials. Certainly there's no shortage of them that you have to show the same movie three days in a row? Yeah, I can do totally without Rudolph's Shiny New Year, but what about Nester the Donkey? I saw that last year for the first time in ages.

... and of course the one special I'd like to see back is The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus... which has FINALLY come out on DVD in a set with Nester the Christmas Donkey (ironically enough, perhaps they had to balance all that pagan with some baby Jesus)

Anyway, that just made it to my wish-list...

I love Christmas time. I enjoy the sentimental movies. But not before Thanksgiving, thank you.

Should Atheists Sing Christmas Hymns?

2009-11-22T07:59:00.000-08:00

I've told my kids: If I can sing about Santa Claus and it's ok, I can sing about Jesus.

Greg Laden goes into more detail about his Holiday practices in his blog, and has posted this video of an interview with Richard Dawkins this morning, which I don't agree with in whole, but is certainly another take on the whole thing:

I'm more often accused of being "soft on religion" by fellow atheists during the holidays... but I don't think it's necessarily our place to be "hard on religion"... just hard on stupidity and folly. At this time of year, when the religious are talking more about giving, sharing, and love, it's a lot easier to be tolerant. Of course, there are always those in the religious right who make it impossible to be totally accepting, especially when they're spouting the same kind of hate, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness that they spout the rest of the year around.

It makes you want to ask them: What would Jesus do?

Equal Opportunity.

2009-11-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

Today I saw some billboards that warmed my heart for the upcoming holiday season. One said "Reason's Greetings" the other "Beware of Dogma". Both billboards were from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

It was a nice change.

When Church= Public School

2009-11-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

I saw it first a couple weeks ago: a huge sign for a Baptist Church at the middle school my children used to attend. I wish I could say I was surprised, but recalled also that this was the very same school which had instituted to Bible study classes at lunch time, and refused to allow my daughter to organize a free thinker's group. But it left a lot of questions, primarily where does this stand as far as the separation of church and state. After all, not only is this a PUBLIC school building, but a building that's paid for with taxpayer money.

But this wasn't a one time thing, nor is it unique. Today I was driving up the Tramway, and noticed signs for The X-Factor Christian Fellowship which is now meeting at Chelwood Elementary. A quick trip to their website verifies this certainly isn't a one time thing. It's a reoccurring event that takes place in the Chelwood Elementary Worship Center (a public school has a "worship center"?)

Chelwood Elementary recently underwent a major remodel... I wonder if that's when they got a "worship center"... because they certainly didn't have one a couple years ago when my daughter went there.

I have to think that this is a bad thing for the students. Schools have tried to fill more and more of kids' lives with after school programs and social outreach... but most programs are approved by the school or government. Is placing churches in the schools going to be equated by state approval or endorsement of these church groups and their religions?

Is this even legal?

But you have insurance (round two)

2009-11-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

I get this all the time. From medicaid. From hospitals. From doctor's offices. I have insurance. I have medicare, to be exact. that still leaves me with quite a few copays, as it did last month. Doctor's office copays are $20 for my primary, $35 for a specialist. Count two primary visits and three specialists last month. Emergency room visits are $50 each. Count two. Day surgery is $250 each. Count one. Hospitalization copay is $550. Count one.

Now I've called the hospital to apply for additional help, but as of a few months ago, they no longer have organizations who are covering the insured... just the uninsured. So with my medical bills last month exceeding my income, what to do?

Now there are a whole lot of us out there who are uninsured or underinsured, and just a small portion of that are covered by any grants or charities. Most of us are slogging along, trying to decide which doctor and which surgery is more important, because there's no way to pay for them. We're bullied and put down at the front desk, where we're told that we can't see the doctor unless we can come up with the cash... never mind how sick you are... too bad you have that stent still in... can't help you with the fever if you don't pay NOW.

Don't wonder why people don't do their own preventive maintenance, skip important tests, and don't get regular check ups. It's not that they don't care about their health, just that they can't make the required payments to be healthy. Every time a doctor writes out a referral to a specialist, every prescription, every test, has to be weighed and prioritized, not strictly according to need or outcome, but according to affordability. It's no wonder people end up in the ER rather than their doctor's office!

I have three more procedures to schedule. One I've already postponed indefinitely. It's only a diagnostic. One I pretty much have to have if I'm planning a long life, and the third is also pretty darn important if I don't want to deal with pain and infection for all that time the other operation is going to give me... but that one I'm up in the air over, because doing another thousand in medical bills this month just isn't on my "to do" list.

Which makes me wonder WHY people are so darn against healthcare insurance reform. Seems to me it can't get too much worse than it is right now.

What a nice thing to wake up to this morning:

2009-11-08T06:26:00.001-08:00

Now we have to get the healthcare bill through the senate.

Pale Blue Dot

2009-11-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

It all starts with Glenn Beck's internal organs...

2009-11-06T19:22:00.001-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The 11/3 Project

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

The Halloween Threat Down!

2009-10-30T19:49:00.001-07:00

I'd like to see PZ do a "best of" video like this.

2009-10-27T13:28:00.001-07:00

His stuff makes this look tame.

Has Science Made a Foothold in Pop Culture?

2009-10-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

It seems so, in a strange kind of way. Stephen Hawking is getting the same kind of internet treatment that is usually reserved for pop icons like Tom Hanks, Miley Cyrus and Harrison Ford: Internet rumors of his death. I'd love to read what PZ has to say about all this, but I'd guess Pharyngula is being overloaded with hits. I certainly can't get the page to load.

I hadn't seen the rumors yet myself, until I hit a link taking me to Yahoo Answers, where someone said with some authority that Hawking was killed by a Christian Fundamentalist because he was close to close to a final proof of the non-existence of God.

I mean just that phrase alone "Final proof of the non-existence of God" should have tipped people off, but people don't think.

The problem is that the voices of reason are being overwhelmed in the forums and on Twitter by the sheer momentum of this ridiculous rumor.

Just stop and think about it.

Anyway, it seems that a lot of this is a corruption of an old Onion radio broadcast (yes, there are still people out there that think The Onion is real news, sad to say):

Old Fashioned Book Burning and Chicken BBQ Nite at the Church:

2009-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

They're burning all those heretic bibles... you know, everything except the KJV in English and a handful of translations based on the KJV.

They're burning all of Satan's music... vile stuff like country western, easy listening, contemporary christian, and southern gospel.

They're burning books by heretics like Mother Theresa and Billy Graham.

Because THEY'RE divinely inspired, even if their web designer wasn't (wear sunglasses if you're going to click on over to their link)

And you thought religious ignorance was dead?

You haven't gone to Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC

Even a God-fearing Conservative "REAL AMERICAN" is only an instant away...

2009-10-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I rode home on the bus from the local hospital, where I was a guest for several days in a semiprivate room. I'll save for another time the story of how admissions sent someone up to my room every morning before breakfast to ask me how I'd like to pay my copay ($550 for the hospital stay, on top of which they tried to charge me the ER visit until they realized that since they own my insurance plan, they couldn't do) and how much I'd like to put down as a downpayment (the minimum downpayment to be $275) and how they treated my offer of every last cent of my cash on hand (all 13 of them) and seemed to think I was joking when I suggested unless I could somehow convince the US government to increase my Social Security to compensate for my increased medical costs, that they would have to wait until I applied for their community care program (which covers 6 months back medical bills), which I promised I'd do as soon as I could include my next two upcoming surgeries.

Instead I'll just talk about how riding home on that bus, escorted by my two teens for my own safety (and they could carry my change of clothing and the small library I'd been working my way through during my little visit) we gazed out at the Sandias, frosted lightly with snow. I sighed and said, "Look how beautiful that is!" And my daughter brought me back to reality by saying "Look how COLD it is." I immediately knew where she was coming from and said "Honey, CERTAINLY Albuquerque housing has switched over the swamp cooler to the furnace today while we were gone... after all, they started conversion a week ago!"

But when I walked through the door, they had not. More than that, upon calling housing maintenance, I learned that maybe they'll get to us next week. After reminding them this is a health issue and letting them know I spent the previous days a guest of our local hospital, we started trying to warm the house up with the dryer (which is electric) and the oven (which is gas) and as night fell, we kept up with alternating hot water in the shower and running the dryer, which allowed us to keep the temperature hovering around 50° rather than the external temperature.

Just so it's clear what "maybe next week" means, here's our forecast for next week, with the overnight lows:

Now when I complain about Albuquerque Housing and this sort of problem (yes, I do pay rent) I invariably get some right-wing conservative asshat who are willing to share some of there wisdom with me like "if you don't like it, move" (as if I live in public housing when I could AFFORD to live somewhere else) or the old conservative standby, "get a job"... as if I gave up my nice teaching job and my $40K pay check so I could raise my family on less than $1000/ month in social security payments, just enough NOT to qualify for foodstamps for the family or medicaid for myself, so that in a month like this I could be nagged by a hospital to pay a total monthly bill(after medicare) that exceeds my income.

For some reason these pinheads think I don't understand their argument. I can sum it up quite concisely: "if you're not ME or MINE, and you're in poverty, it's because you for some reason DESERVE to be." There are times I wish I didn't delete a lot of my previous blog here with the intent of separating out a whole lot of personal stuff and travel and science stuff, because I had a rather interesting conversation with an individual about his assumptions about me, from the very first one, that I obviously can walk because I was clearly standing in my profile photo (I was, in fact, seated in my profile photo). But the fact of the matter is that people see what they want to see, and it gives some people a vast amount of comfort to assume that bad things only happen to drug addicts, drunks, homosexuals and sluts.

I grew up in a God-fearing, Conservative, "REAL AMERICAN" household. My family were German immigrants, protestants, and so stereotypical of the 50's family that you expected mom to yell out the door for The Beaver. I remember growing up how dad sat me on his knee and told me about King and his people getting uppity down in the south, and how they were going to ruin it for all the hard working people... and how someone needed to shoot him to shut him up. Grandma warned me about Catholics (who were, after all, no better than witches: they ring little bells and their god comes). I grew up being a good little protestant white girl, complete with my little white gloves for Sunday at church.

Except, of course, that I wasn't white. My mother would no doubt say that she nursed a viper at her breast ... except that breast feeding was "unnatural", and of course the fact that I was adopted, which also meant that I was one of those "filthy squaw babies foisted off on unsuspecting white women".

Yup, I grew up in a "REAL AMERICAN", even though by some genetic mishap, I happened to be a total poser.

I started getting an education in life pretty quick. So even though I was living the REAL AMERICAN lifestyle (started working on the farm at 11, but already had my little home enterprises that brought a good profit to the family at age 5, from shoveling driveways to doing custom embroidery work for weddings) I was meeting people (especially people of color) and seeing things (in those liberal breeding grounds they called schools) that made me question some of those basic assumptions that went with being WASP.

The problem is that too many people never challenge those basic assumptions themselves.

It's much more comforting to look down on someone else and sneer "get a job" than to try to imaging falling ill, having a disabling accident, or losing a job and having someone else sneer the same at you. There's this hostility that helps isolate you from responsibility when you can remind a person that you're paying their social security (even though they paid your mom's for decades) as if that gives them some sort of right to do with you (or say to you) whatever they please.

But it only takes an instant, a diagnosis, or a pink slip, to come down this far... to have lost everything... and there is nothing about being conservative, Republican, or white that will insulate you from those everyday risks of living.

See you at the bottom.

What Rift?

2009-10-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

There's a certain amount of ignorance in all this. The people who are reporting this and talking about "schism" are still thinking of atheists in terms of having some sort of doctrine that we all agree on. There's no doctrine. There's no religion. The one thing that we do agree on (not because you have to agree to become a "member", like some sort of atheist catechism) is the non-existence of some sort of being who demands our worship.

I find the idea that there is an "Atheist movement" silly. What you might be seeing is a civil rights movement, however: Individuals who want to uphold the bill of rights with regard to state supported religion, and to eliminate prejudice against atheists.

There is no "rift" there is only disagreements on how to best support the rights of individuals who do not believe in God... rather like any other civil rights movement, there is a pretty good spectrum of how it's best to get through to the public. I'd think that most of you who didn't live through it have at least read about the history of the black civil rights movement to be able to see parallels in political and public awareness technique.

Next, there's a profound amount of ignorance in some of this because people can't tell the difference between an atheistic argument and a scientific argument. There are some people who don't understand that saying there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a god is not an atheistic argument, it's a scientific argument. Even as a Christian, I knew that there is no empirical evidence of God, that the only evidence of a god that I required was my own, personal faith. A lot of argument has come about because of the situation in our education system and the attempt at certain religious groups to replace scientific knowledge in our schools with religious beliefs as part of a conversion strategy, and exactly the kind of behavior the first amendment was created to prevent.

How to best deal with that often is at core of the rift: Do atheists simply state there is no god, and these beliefs are therefore nonsense? Or do scientific minds state the argument against the beliefs that are counter-indicated by scientific discovery?

For a long time, people have assumed that they have to tone down or water down statements of scientific truth to allow for "cultural differences" or to "honor the other's belief" But recently more and more atheists have stood up and said "Why do we have to honor a belief that is not only ridiculous, but has become the foundation of a movement to discredit science, and threaten the advancement of man... not to mention causing wars and all manner of social injustices?"

... and of course from there it's a small step for some atheists to stop saying "you're beliefs are foolish" to saying "you're foolish for believing"

This isn't a breaking of a group or movement, there was no universal organization or doctrine to begin with. These are individuals who have come to certain realizations independently and developed certain reactions to those realizations independently... which is why you have a wide variety of approaches by atheists towards religion.

Finally, I'd like to point out that the most interesting thing is that the religious are so narrow minded and have their own sense of denominational organization and doctrine so ingrained in them, that they simply can't imagine any individuals who don't have a doctrine or who live by faith, but instead live by empirical evidence and objective reasoning.

As an individual, it's frightening to me that there are so many people who will believe whatever they're told to believe, without questioning the evidence or questioning the first assumptions. That goes for both religion AND science. The difference is that science can back up it's claims, and that religion can only be a matter of faith. For some people, that faith is fine, but if they chose to believe they have an invisible friend protecting them and who will torture them forever if they don't do what they say... if that's their faith, sure: they have every right to say that. They don't have every right to use public funds to teach other people's children that this is a truth, and they certainly don't have any right to beat up on those who's invisible friend has a different name, or who doesn't have an invisible friend at all.

OH CRAP

2009-10-18T14:36:00.001-07:00

I CAN'T not post politics and religion. The Radula is still here.

They Might Be Giants: I'm a Paleontologist

2009-09-03T05:09:00.001-07:00