Tag: Indiana

Reality Check: We all need it (Book review)

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Reality Check, Science Deniers, Skeptical

Reality Check: We all need it (Book review)

Posted by idoubtit

There are some writers for which you know pretty much exactly what you are going to get. Donald R. Prothero is one of those writers. I expect a well-researched, comprehensive treatment of the topic with a flavor of emotion here and there. That’s what I got with Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future, 2013, Indiana Univ Press.

The core of the book is summed up in the John Burroughs quote given on page 1:

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.

RC

Once you observe the methods of creationists as the classic example of science denialists, you can recognize the same tactics in those that reject climate change. I have also noted the same tricks in environmentalists or those holding contrarian views about vaccines, the paranormal, and various consumer products.

The premise of Reality Check is that when “a well-entrenched belief system comes in conflict with scientific or historic reality” the believers in this system will actively discount, ignore or distort the facts that go against it. They may stop at nothing to defend their belief – they will lie, hide evidence, manufacture evidence, pay people off, bully, harass, discredit, and even threaten the scientists who are  supporting the “inconvenient” conclusion.

The book highlights denialism rampant in the fields of environmentalism, global warming, evolution education, vaccine information, AIDS treatment policy, medical claims, energy policy and population size and growth. Each chapter exposes the hidden agendas of those who reject the scientific consensus and provides the reader with the solid, established evidence.

As one example, Reality Check exposes the devious doings of the tobacco industry. I learned the history of the manufactured controversy surrounding the dangers of smoking about 5 years ago in my Master’s degree program in Science and the Public. I was appalled. I had no idea that there were people running an industry that was knowingly making people addicts and killing them just so they can keep their profit margins. The lies and deceptions were hard for me to accept but it was real! The facts are out there now and we know the truth about tobacco.

Citizens and consumers would be smart to learn the pattern of denialism as outlined in this book. Democracies need well informed citizens. Instead, we have a population that seems to prefer their news spoon fed from the internet or television, choosing outlets that support only their worldviews to begin with. There is no deliberation taking place, no deep thinking. Many are happy to exist only in their echo chambers never hearing the whole story.

The absolute strongest part of the book is the second chapter entitled “Science, Our Candle in the Darkness”. It enlightens the reader about what science is, what it isn’t, and how some exploit the public’s weakness in understanding how science works to convince them that the consensus is inaccurate. The “Baloney detection” section was particularly pointed, as Prothero explains the harm in false claims: “Pseudoscience robs people of their time or money or resources they really need in moments of stress and hardship and sells them phony answers and snake-oil just for temporary reassurance.” (Page 19)

Fake claims anger me. Fake claims backed by an agenda are even more devious and dirty. This compels me to do skeptical advocacy as I do. I know Don Prothero feels the same. Don is a wealth of knowledge.  What he has to say is important, not because it provides him income or notoriety. It’s because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what society needs to know in order to function to its highest purpose. I would pull out Chapter 2 and make it required reading in all senior high school classes. Kids need to be armed with information that can save them from losing money, health or wits by falling for nonsense ideas, quack cures and fast-talking dealers.

I learned many new things from this book, which is why I read books in the first place. Reality Check can be used as a college textbook and students will find their own personal well-entrenched belief system challenged. I recommend it for anyone interested in science, society or politics.

Related articles

Slimy Baptist Predator Preys on Vulnerable Teenage Girl | Jesus, the Sex Fiends Creepy Wingman

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Baptist predator, Religious Sex Abuse, Religious Sex Crimes

Jack Schaap, Indiana Pastor, Claimed Jesus Wanted Him To Have Sex With Teenage Girl

By Meredith Bennett-Smith

Jack Schaap Pastor Teenage Sex
A disgraced Indiana megachurch leader who seduced his teenage parishioner evidently told her Jesus wanted them to have sex.

As part of the government’s sentencing memorandum, federal prosecutors this week released incriminating letters between Jack Schaap, the former pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Ind., and his teen victim.

“In our ‘fantasy talk,’ you have affectionately spoken of being ‘my wife,’” Schaap wrote in one letter, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “That is exactly what Christ desires for us. He wants to marry us + become eternal lovers!”

WATCH Schaap’s sermon in the video below

Schaap, 55, was fired by his church in July, according to the Associated Press. He eventually pleaded guilty to the federal charge of taking a minor across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

The scandal has shocked the Hammond church’s 15,000 members, who elected Schaap their pastor in 2001. The father of two was described as a “magnetic” and “charismatic” preacher, according to CBS. He was also married to the daughter of the church’s former pastor.

The inappropriate relationship between Schaap and the 17-year-old, however, was discovered when a church deacon saw on Schaap’s cellphone a picture of Schaap and the teenager kissing. According to court documents the relationship began when the victim was one week shy of her 17th birthday.

“I’m surprised that this happened,” former church member Cherise Williams told Fox Chicago affiliate WFLD 32 back in July. “The pastor made an error – obviously made a mistake … He was a charismatic leader, and he helped a lot of people in their struggles. Obviously there’s still a fondness there for him. The one thing we want to be sure we bring is reconciliation to him and his wife.”

While the Times of Northwest Indiana reports that multiple letters of support have been sent to Schaap’s sentencing judge, U.S. District Court Judge Rudy Lozano, the victim told the court that the relationship has left her reeling.

“He told me to confide in him, to trust him, and he made me feel safe and comfortable around him as a man of God,” she wrote in a letter to the court, according to the Sun-Times. “(Schaap) preyed on that trust and my vulnerability.”

Prosecutors said Schaap “groomed” the girl before becoming intimate with her, counseling her and texting with her frequently — 662 times in one month, according to phone records.

Sentencing in the case was schedule for Thursday.

WATCH Former First Baptist Church pastor Jack Schaap preaching an energetic sermon incorporating hunting implements at his church’s 2010 Youth Conference.

Related articles

American Taliban Pushes For Mandatory Prayer In Public Schools

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Taliban, Church and State, Lords Prayer, Religious Right, Separation of Church and State

State Sen. Dennis Kruse Pushes For Mandatory Recitation Of Lord’s Prayer In Indiana Public Schools

Dennis Kruse School Prayer

Indiana state Sen. Dennis Kruse proposed legislation that would require public school students to recite the Lord’s Prayer. (Image via Facebook)

A Republican state senator wants Indiana’s public school students to begin each day by reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Dennis Kruse, chair of the state Senate’s education committee, has introduced Senate Bill 23, which would allow Indiana’s school districts to require recitation of the prayer, “In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen.”

The proposal does offer exemptions, including a provision allowing students and parents to opt out of a school’s mandatory prayer. Still, experts and the Indiana Senate legal committee believe the bill to be unconstitutional, the Indianapolis Star reports.

A similar law exists in Florida, but no schools there adopted the measure for fear of hefty legal fees associated with likely litigation, Andrew Seidel, a staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, told the Star. A lawsuit against a prayer banner in a Rhode Island school last year, for example, cost the school more than $173,000 in attorney’s fees.

Seidel told the Star he worried requiring prayer in schools would lead to bullying of students who chose not to participate. Still, the Indiana proposal comes as more atheist clubs spring up in high schools across the country, even in more religious states like North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

Kruse’s history in Indiana education has been filled with controversy. He sponsored a bill last year to allow schools to teach creationism that failed in the state House. He tried again in December by announcing plans to introduce new legislation for what he called “truth in education,” an effort that would allow teachers to question scientific principles, such as evolution.

Related articles

Fox News Inspires Mosque Arsonist Claims “I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News”

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Faux News, Fox News, Islamophobia, Randolph Linn, Right Wing News, Rupert Murdoch

Fox News Inspires Mosque Arsonist Claims “I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News”

 

Fox Hate Speech and Paranoid Memes lead directly to physical hate crimes!
Yesterday in Indiana, 52-year old truck driver Randolph Linn pleaded guilty to all charges in an arson attack against the Islamic Center of Toledo.

Linn testified that he got “riled up” by Fox News and right wing talk radio, drank 45 beers, and set fire to the mosque’s prayer room because he learned from Fox that Muslims are terrorists who don’t believe in Jesus Christ: Mosque Arsonist Tells Court: ‘I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News’.

Linn explained to the court that he had gotten “riled up” after watching Fox News.

“And I was more sad when Judge [Jack] Zouhary asked him that, ‘Do you know any Muslims or do you know what Islam is?’” one mosque member who attended the hearing recalled to WNWO. “And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

“Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up,” Linn also reportedly told the judge. “Most Muslims are terrorists and don’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

Linn claimed that he had consumed 45 beers in the 6 hours before leaving his Indiana home to set fire to the mosque, which he had discovered while working as a truck driver.

After his arrest on Oct. 2, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ava Dusten said that Linn had told officers, “Fuck those Muslims… They would kill us if they got the chance.”

Related articles

God’s Gift of Rape | The Real Republican Rape Platform

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in God Rape, Godly Rape, GOP Clown Car, GOP Crazies, GOP Idiots, GOP Wankers, Republican Rape

The real Republican rape platform

It’s no accident GOP candidates can’t stop talking about rape: the party view is women are mere vessels subject to men’s will

    • Via:- Jill Filipovic
Richard Mourdock, Indiana

Richard Mourdock, Republican Senate candidate from Indiana, who has not retracted his debate remark that a pregnancy caused by rape ‘is something that God intended to happen’. Photograph: Michael Conroy/AP

Dear GOP candidates and party members,

I’m going to give you some free campaign advice: stop talking about rape.

The latest Republican rape commentary comes from Romney-endorsed Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock, who tells us:

“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Cue outrage, then cue “apology” from Mourdock – not for his comments, but for “any interpretation other than what I intended”. National Republican senatorial committee chairman John Cornyn voiced his support for Mourdock and added that he also believes “life is a gift from God.”

I would hate for Mr Mourdock to think I’m misinterpreting him here, so let’s be clear about what he said: he did not say that rape is a gift from God. He did say that an unwanted pregnancy is a post-rape goodie bag from the Lord.

And that the Lord intended it to happen that way.

Perhaps God should rethink his delivery system. And perhaps Mourdock should rethink his interpretation of divine will.

What this umpteenth rape comment tells us isn’t that the Republican party has a handful of unhinged members who sometimes flub their talking points. It reveals the real agendas and beliefs of the GOP as a whole.

These incidents aren’t isolated, and they aren’t rare. Sharron Angle, who ran for a US Senate seat out of Nevada, said she would tell a young girl wanting an abortion after being raped and impregnated by her father that “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that she should make a “lemon situation into lemonade“. Todd Akin said victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant – an especially confusing talking point, if God is giving rape victims the gift of pregnancy. Maybe God only gives that gift to victims of illegitimate rape?

Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard asserted:

“Some girls rape easy.”

Douglas Henry, a Tennessee state senator, told his colleagues:

“Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”

Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly declared that marital rape doesn’t exist, because when you get married you sign up to be sexually available to your husband at all times. And when asked a few years back about what kind of rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion, South Dakota Republican Bill Napoli answered:

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Rape lemonade. Legitimate rape. The sodomized virgin exception. A rape gift from God.

Some Republicans, like Mitt Romney, have tried to distance themselves from their party’s rhetorical obsession with sexual violation. What they’re hoping we won’t notice is the fact that their party is politically committed to sexual violation.

Opposition to abortion in all cases – rape, incest, even to save the pregnant woman’s life or health – is written into the Republican party platform. Realizing they can’t make abortion illegal overnight, conservatives instead rally around smaller initiatives like mandatory waiting periods, transvaginal ultrasounds and mandated lectures about “life” to make abortion as expensive, difficult and humiliating as possible.

Republicans bow to the demands of “pro-life” organizations, not a single one of which supports even birth control, and the GOP now routinely opposes any effort to make birth control or sexual education available and accessible. They propose laws that would require women to tell their employers what they’re using birth control for, so that employers could determine which women don’t deserve coverage (the slutty ones who use birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy) and which women do (the OK ones who use it for other medical reasons).

Mainstream GOP leaders, including Mitt Romney, campaign with conservative activists who lament the fact that women today no longer fully submit to the authority of their husbands and fathers, mourn a better time when you could legally beat your wife, and celebrate the laws of places like Saudi Arabia where men are properly in charge. Senate Republicans, including Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and “legitimate rape” Todd Akin, blocked the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. And Ryan and Akin joined forces again to propose “personhood” legislation in Washington, DC that would define a fertilized egg as a person from the moment sperm meets egg, outlawing abortion in all cases and many forms of contraception, and raising some serious questions about how, exactly, such a law would be enforced.

Underlying the Republican rape comments and actual Republican political goals are a few fundamental convictions: first, women are vessels for childbearing and care-taking; second, women cannot be trusted; and third, women are the property of men.

Mourdock’s statement that conceiving from rape is a gift positions women as receptacles, not as autonomous human beings. This view of women as vessels – vessels for sex with their husbands, vessels for carrying a pregnancy, vessels for God’s plan – is a necessary component of the kind of extreme anti-abortion legislation most Republican politicians support.

So is the idea that women are both fundamentally unintelligent and dishonest. Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment and Rivard’s contention that “some girls rape easy” rely on the idea that women routinely lie about rape and shouldn’t be believed; blocking VAWA relied partly on similar logic put forward by men’s rights activists, that women lie about being abused in order to secure citizenship and other benefits. Hostility to abortion rights similarly positions rightwing lawmakers as the best people to determine whether or not any particular woman should be legally compelled to carry a pregnancy to term.

Women, they seem to think, don’t know their own bodies or their own lives, and cannot be trusted to determine for themselves whether continuing a pregnancy is a good idea.

Rape treats women as vessels, disregarding our autonomy and our right to control what happens to us physically and sexually. The Republican position is that women are not entitled to make fundamental decisions about our own bodies and our own sexual and reproductive health. When that position is written into the GOP platform and is a legislative priority, can we really be surprised when it’s further reflected in Republican legislators’ comments on rape?

These aren’t a few errant remarks from insensitive politicians. They’re at the heart of the Republican party’s agenda.

Related articles

What American Conservatives Say About Rape – Includes Chart

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Conservatives and Rape, God and Rape, Godly Rape, Republican Dumbasses

news
What American Conservatives Say About Rape
Via:- Amelia McDonell-Parry

I don’t know about you, but I have such a hard time remembering which conservative politician said what ridiculously offensive thing about rape.

They’re all old and white and most of them are in some state of partial baldness. They all look the same!

And they all sound basically the same too, given that woman-hating bile spews from their open pie holes.

Alas, they are all individual people, who hold or have held positions of power within government, and aspire to inflict their beliefs upon your life, so it behoves us to be able to keep them straight. Know thine enemies!

Above, a quick overview of the most noteworthy five: Richard Mourdock (running for U.S. Senate in Indiana, current state treasurer), Iowa Congressman Steve King, Missouri Representative Todd Akin, Tom Smith (running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania), and and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

You know, there are people who listen to and agree with these terrible concepts and who admire all five of these Republicans. You can bet Mitt and his buddy Ryan are included in these.

I will be amazed when someone comes out with the statistic after the election of how many women voted Republican. It is as if they would enjoy being treated like cattle

Related articles

RAPE “that’s something God intended” GOP Senate Candidate Tells Women

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in God Rape, GOP Idiots, Wingnuts

 

GOP Senate Candidate Shouldn’t Tell Women God Wants Them To Have Babies From Rape

Richard Mourdock Abortion Rape

 

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, “that’s something God intended,” and that she should not be able to get an abortion. Is this shocking to you?

Read More at: http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/24/richard-mourdock-abortion-rape-victims-god-intended-pregnant/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, “that’s something God intended,” and that she should not be able to get an abortion. Is this shocking to you?

Read More at: http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/24/richard-mourdock-abortion-rape-victims-god-intended-pregnant/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

Would Desperate Rape Victims Seek Illegal Abortions? Joelle Gomez, executive director of the Women’s Center in Stockton, Cali., which counsels 4,000 rape victims a year, worries that raped women might seek unsafe abortions, as they did in the past. And as in the past, they might die from illegal abortions.

Read More at: http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/24/richard-mourdock-abortion-rape-victims-god-intended-pregnant/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

Will Women Have Any Rights? But Mourdock’s position is so extreme that it leads Gloria Feldt, the former President of Planned Parenthood, to believe that the “whole issue of women’s reproductive rights, isn’t about what God thinks, but about not seeing the ‘personhood’ of women.” “If you don’t have the right to own and control your own body, then other rights are meaningless,” she explains. “Also, would God really want women to be punished. It’s so cruel.”

Read More at: http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/24/richard-mourdock-abortion-rape-victims-god-intended-pregnant/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

Related articles

Republican Dominated Indiana State Senate Committee Votes for Creationism in Schools

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Crazies, Religious Fascisim, Religious Fascists, Religious Fundamentalism, Republican Anti-Science, Republican Insanity, Republican Loons

Republican Dominated Indiana State Senate Committee Votes for Creationism in Schools
Yes, it never dies
By freetoken

Creationism, that zombie of the American political scene, rises again — this time in Indiana:

An Indiana Senate committee on Wednesday endorsed teaching creationism in public schools, despite pleas from scientists and religious leaders to keep religion out of science classrooms.

Senate Bill 89 allows school corporations to authorize “the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life” and specifically mentions “creation science” as one such theory.

State Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, who voted for the measure, said if there are many theories about life’s origins, students should be taught all of them.

[…]

The Republican-controlled Senate Education Committee nevertheless voted 8-2 to send the legislation to the full Senate.

Here’s the substance of the text of the bill:

[EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 18. The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.

Anyone who has followed this issue in the US can tell right away that even if this bill passed the Indiana Senate, and was eventually signed by the Governor of Indiana, that a federal judge would strike it down right away as unconstitutional (with much precedent in the US court system.)

Yet the creationists still try, over and over.

And, to simply use the phrase “creation science” uncritically informs us of how anti-scientific the authors of that bill are.

The Chairman of the committee was one of the original authors, and given that 4 more signed on as co-authors pretty much guaranteed it would get through the committee.

The State senator mentioned in the news article is one of the co-authors, Scott Schneider, has introduced or co-authored several bills, many of which are close to the heart of the tea-partying and creationists/home-schooling groups. For instance, he’s introduced bills on Right To Work, on controlling sexually explicit material, and so forth. He also works the Tea Party circuit for political support.

Sen. Schneider is also a well known anti-abortionist and a favorite of the Indiana Right to Life organization, and last year helped spearhead an effort to defund any organization in IN that performed abortions.

So we see that the stereotype is reinforced – tea party, creationism, anti-abortion – they are all part of the same stew that is today’s Republican party.

Related articles