Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here Mr. Deity sheds his persona of God and simply becomes Keith Dalton, going full-out against religionists. In his latest video, “The Way of the mister: In defense of killing babies,” he takes apart an column by Dennis Prager (see below), defending the Noah’s Ark story as not only historically accurate, but, despite its aqueious genocide, “one of the most moral stories ever told”! Dalton is as biting as ever.
Below is Bill Maher’s original tirade about Noah’s Ark (you’ll have to watch this on YouTube by clicking on the link in the screenshot below, for embedding is forbidden).
Dennis Prager is a Jewish conservative columnist and radio talk-show host who’s constantly decrying the erosion of America’s “Judeo-Christian values”. And here’s his original essay defending the morality of the Noah Story, “Noah: One of the most moral stories ever told” . Have a look, but only if your stomach is strong!
That piece shows the ability of apologists to rationalize anything, no matter how hideous, as part of God’s benevolence. I look forward Prager’s explanation for the Holocaust.
Now we can sit back and wait for the gun apologists to come over here crying, “That’s an unfair comparison.” They’re like theologians in their ability to explain away any malfeasance caused by their favorite toys.
Richard Martinez, whose son died in the Santa Barbara massacre, gives an emotional interview to CNN. This breaks my heart.
A Pakistani immigrant beat his wife to death in their Brooklyn home after she made the mistake of cooking him lentils for dinner instead of the hearty meal of goat meat that he craved, according to court papers.
Noor Hussain, 75, was so outraged over the vegetarian fare that he pummeled his wife, Nazar Hussain, 66, with a stick until she was a “bloody mess,” according to prosecutors and court papers.
“Defendant asked [his wife] to cook goat and [his wife] said she made something else,” the court papers indicated as Hussain’s murder trial opened on Wednesday.
“The conversation got louder and [his wife] disrespected defendant by cursing at defendant and saying motherf- -ker, and . . . defendant took a wooden stick and hit her with it on her arm and mouth.”
Defense attorney Julie Clark admitted Hussain beat his wife — but argued that he is guilty of only manslaughter because he didn’t intend to kill her. In Pakistan, Clark said, beating one’s wife is customary.
“He comes from a culture where he thinks this is appropriate conduct, where he can hit his wife,” Clark said in her opening statements at the Brooklyn Supreme Court bench trial. “He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.”
Mr. Hussain will have to learn the hard way that he’s not in Pakistan any more. Another woman dead, and this time I blame Islam, which in many Muslim countries (including Pakistan) marginalizes women to the extent that beating them up is considered “appropriate.” The distinction between anti-female culture and anti-female religion is nonexistent there.
The details:
Madni said that Hussain “brutally attacked his wife as she lay in her bed” — leaving deep lacerations on her head, arms and shoulders, and causing her brain to hemorrhage.
He beat her with a stick that the family had found in the street and used to stir their laundry in a washtub, the court papers state.
He then tried to clean up the blood that had splattered onto their bedroom wall before calling his son for help, Madni said.
She died—horribly—for serving lentils instead of goat. What a screwed-up culture!
It’s that time of year again in the northern hemisphere, so the BBC is treating us to three weeks of nightly live TV in the shape of Springwatch. This is a family-oriented programme that each year broadcasts live over three weeks from a key site of biodiversity in the UK. This year – the programme’s 10th anniversary – it’s coming from Minsmere, an RSPB reserve in Suffolk.
The programme is a mixture of live cams and pre-recorded pieces. I know some readers get infuriated by what they see as ‘dumbing down’ and occasional silliness, but you have to remember that it’s a family programme, and I think it does a remarkable job of introducing non-specialists to the natural world. They never flinch from showing natural selection at work even when it’s grim and will upset children (last year they showed a grass snake nomming a whole nest of reed bunting babies which we’d been following for a couple of weeks). And one of the presenters, Chris Packham, is always introducing the latest research on the various animals they show.
Among the cameras that they’ve installed this year is this one on a bittern nest (I’ve put a screenshot below, the cam itself is here). The bittern is an incredibly elusive bird thatnests in reed beds and is astonishingly camouflaged (nearly as good as a nightjar…). There’s been a lot of rain on the site, and the nest could be flooded (an avocet nest they were watching got drowned on the first night, and the two eggs were lost). The parents spend quite some time off nest.
The feed rotates between the ‘scrape’ (a stretch of mud that has an avocet nest on it), a badger’s sett (not much going on in the day), a reed warbler’s nest and the bitterns…
Finally, the third feed rotates between a rabbit’s nest in some hay, a fantastic bullfinch nest in some very scratchy thorns, a nightingale nest and some bees…
The cameras are live 07:00 – 23:00 each day, UK time. UK readers can also catch up by watching previous episodes.
What a dispiriting week! While fighting off a nasty cold, I’m having to deal with literally dozens of emails and comments from creationists and gun nuts.
Here’s a sample of one of the responses (not published) to my post “Imagine no guns”: “You people are more dangerous to society than any lunatic with a gun.” There were many more along these lines, as well as from those who argued that since the Santa Barbara killer used a knife and a gun, why not ban knives? But of course knives have peaceable uses, and guns don’t. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a negative correlation between gun ownership and IQ.
At any rate, a very strange comment arrived this morning from one “Don J. Grundmann”, who wrote in response to my post Right-wing politician gives an expensive dino skeleton (proving Noah’s Flood) to the Creation Museum. The poliitician donating the skeleton was Michael Peroutka, a Confederacy booster and secessionist (aka racist). Apparently, Grundmann is his pal and wanted to defend him, while dissing evolution at the same time:
I am thankful that I know Michael Peroutka; a man of immense integrity and honor who is unflinching in challenging any and all evils which are afflicting this nation and humanity as a whole. I am even more thankful that I read the book ” Science vs Evolution,” found at evolution-facts.org, which totally exposes and shatters the Religion of Evolution. To live in a nation where freedom of speech and religion is allowed is an additional wonderful gift to be thankful for although I do wish that the ” science ” of evolution would be more fully discussed as the religion which it truly is. In this regard I pose a basic question in response to those who will attack my above comments – How ( other than your standard time + dirt + water argument ) did a SINGLE cell ( much less its ability to replicate ); inclusive of nucleus, DNA, nuclear membrane, and outer membrane; develop by RANDOM CHANCE? How do you overturn mathematics which conclusively shows that the mathematical possibility of evolution is ZERO? Answer ( which I already know ) – you ( as the ” scientist ” which you are ) will, as with any other challenge ) simply ignore such inconvienient facts.
I looked up Grundmann, who appears to be a wacko along the lines of Peroutka himself; Grundmann is an anti-gay activist, someone opposed to the government’s imposition of taxes, and a proposed candidate for President in 1968 by the American Independent Party—a descendant of the party that ran George Wallace for President in 1968. He’s also a Christian chiropractor from California (don’t all these things go together?) who ran on the American Independent ticket for a House seat in 2002.
And, lo and behold, you can see him on YouTube! Here is Grundmann dressed as Satan, showing the evil of public schools:
Would you let Satan adjust your spine?
And here’s Mr. Grundmann protesting gay marriage, which he considers a “mass mental molestation of our children”:
I won’t bother to reply to Grundmann’s standard creationist objections to evolution (“you don’t understand how life started so God did it”) except to say that his total ignorance is belied by the single statement that evolution is equivalent to change by RANDOM CHANCE.
We have a mammal today—and a strange one! The photo is again by Stephen Barnard from Idaho:
Pronghorn Antelope—not really an antelope, not a deer, not a goat—the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae.
Apparently, at least according to the National Wlidlife Federation, the pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is the fastest mammal in North America, supposedly able to attain speeds of up to 60 mph (97 kph). I’m dubious about that because it’s hard to measure such speeds. They are a conservation success: once deemed almost certain to go extinct from habitat loss and hunting, they’re now in good shape, with a population size between 500,000 and a million. This is thanks to many organizations, including the federal government and the Audubon Society, which worked together to protect their land and the crucial migration corridor (see below):
The NWF adds this:
Even more amazing than its speed is the pronghorn’s migration. Herds of pronghorns migrate 150 miles each way between Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin and Grand Teton National Park. The only other land animal to travel farther in North America is the caribou.
We also have a bird—a female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) snapped at the feeder by reader Diana MacPherson:
And so we have yet another “honour killing”. It was by stoning, it was a woman (Farzana Parveen) who was killed for the horrible crime of marrying for love, she was pregnant at her death, and she was stoned in front of the High Court Building of Lahore. Oh, and apparently nothing was done to the husband/father. It’s always the women who get punished. A man who marries for love apparently doesn’t besmirch his family’s honour.
The Guardian reports:
Nearly 20 members of the woman’s family, including her father and brothers, attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in broad daylight before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore, police investigator Rana Mujahid said.
. . . Another police officer, Naseem Butt, identified the slain woman as Farzana Parveen, 25, and said she had married Mohammad Iqbal against her family’s wishes after being engaged to him for years.
Her father, Mohammad Azeem, had filed an abduction case against Iqbal, which the couple was contesting, her lawyer Mustafa Kharal said. He confirmed that she was three months’ pregnant.
The brutal attack apparently followed the court proceedings described above:
Parveen’s relatives had waited outside the court, which is located on a main downtown thoroughfare. As the couple walked up to the main gate, the family members fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, her lawyer said.
When she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby construction site, Iqbal said.
The police have taken the father into custody and are trying to round up the other killers, but the lack of remorse, though expected, is chilling:
Parveen’s father surrendered after the incident and called the murder an “honour killing,” Butt said.
“I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it,” Mujahid, the police investigator, quoted the father as saying.
“Insulted all of our family”? What “honour” has been redeemed by this murder? Is the family more “honourable” than it was before they stoned a 25-year-old to death? Truly, this is a mentality and a world I cannot understand. I’ve seen stonings on video, and they’re horrible—not a way I’d choose to die. To kill someone like that—to kill someone you know and once loved like that—because they themselves married for love, shows how far religion can warp human morality. Those who threw the brickbats, after all, thought that morality demanded that behavior.
It not just Islam, of course, though Catholics and Orthodox Jews have less lethal ways of controlling women’s behavior and reproduction. I’m not expert enough to suss out the role of Islam per se in honour killings, though I know that it’s far more common in Muslim cultures than in others. But I know that “culture”, “politics” and “religion” are much more intertwined in Islam than in other faiths. All I can say is that a 25-year-old and her fetus are dead, that a pack of rabid thugs killed them, and that religion almost certainly had something to do with it. Oh, and that this won’t stop until Islam stops treating women as wombs on the hoof, as temptresses, and as vessels of “honour”, but accords them the respect and support for their aspirations that is the decent thing to do in an enlightened world.
Mohammad Iqbal, right, in an ambulance next to the body of his pregnant wife who was stoned to death by her own family in Lahore. Photograph: KM Chaudary/AP
