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.
In the U.S., many school classrooms, particularly those harboring younger kids, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, an official government “creed,” every morning. (I did this for many years.) You’re supposed to stand, face the flag, and put your hand over your heart, and say the words in the box below.
The pledge has gone through a lot of changes, including the addition of the word “God” in 1954 to distinguish our proudly religious nation from the Godless Communists during the Cold War. Here, from Wikipedia, are its various incarnations:
Two series of court rulings have established some ground rules. First, no child can be forced to recite the Pledge, or stand and salute the flag. (That’s the only good thing the Jehovah’s Witnesses ever did.) Second, the words “under God” have been repeatedly affirmed to be Constitutional, though of course they’re not. And now the highest court in Massachusetts has buttressed the latter stand, ruling that the use of “under God” does not constitute discrimination against atheists.
The highest court in Massachusetts ruled Friday that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools does not discriminate against atheists.
The Supreme Judicial Court said the words “under God” in the pledge reflect a patriotic practice, not a religious one.
“We hold that the recitation of the pledge, which is entirely voluntary, violates neither the Constitution nor the statute,” Chief Justice Roderick Ireland wrote, later adding “it is not a litmus test for defining who is or is not patriotic.”
“Although the words “under God” undeniably have a religious tinge, courts that have considered the history of the pledge and the presence of those words have consistently concluded that the pledge, notwithstanding its reference to God, is a fundamentally patriotic exercise, not a religious one.”
An atheist family from Acton sued in 2010 claiming that the daily recitation of the pledge in classrooms violated their three children’s constitutional rights.
The family, who are not identified in the suit, claimed the ruling insinuates that nonbelievers are less patriotic.
You can see the court’s ruling here. I’m not sure about the lower-court’s ruling about the insinuation of nonpatriotism (the family had appealed), but that certainly was the case when I was a kid. Anybody who refused to stand and recite the Pledge would, at least in my classes, have been completely ostracized. But now that the right to not recite the pledge is protected by the courts, the real reason “God” should go is because it violates the First Amendment, just as the words “In God We Trust” do on our currency. (That was added in 1957, and every year at its annual meeting, the Freedom from Religion Foundation auctions off “clean money”: godless bills made before 1957.) I certainly don’t trust in God!
Of course now that courts are repeatedly affirming that the invocation of God in public forums isn’t really religion, but merely a “historical tradition,” there’s not a prayer of getting this stuff out of the Pledge or off the currency. The long-term plan of the religious Right, now supported by the Supreme Court, is to establish Christianity as a de facto official religion of the U.S. We have to fight this whenever we see it, even if the issue is as small as a cross on a courthouse lawn. For if anything is a slippery slope, it’s the creeping incursion of religion into American public life.
I’d never heard of feline cerebellar hypoplasia before, but apparently it’s a non-fatal neurological condition that causes the cat to be “wobbly” in its movements. Ralphee, a wobbly kitten from, apparently, Queensland, is becoming an internet star.
Part of Ralphee’s fame comes from her companionship with a d*g named Max. From Wakaleo Animal Channel, the group that posted the video (Wakaleois a genus of extinct marsupial carnivore):
Ralphee’s condition is a neurological disorder known as feline cerebellar hypoplasia. A kitten is born with “CH” when their cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls fine motor skills and coordination, is underdeveloped at birth.
These cats are known for their “drunken sailor” walk, which is why they’re known endearingly as “wobbly cats.”
Unless a CH cat has other health issues, their life expectancy is the same as a cat’s without CH. Since the condition is non-progressive, it will never get worse — and in some cases, owners say that their cats become more capable over time.
Ever since Ralphee was brought home, Max is never far away. He appears to be forever curious and watches over Ralphee wherever she goes. Ralphee is growing more mischievous by the day and loves to see what Max is doing as well. She will often get excited when he is nearby and leap in the air before playfully charging in his direction.
Despite her condition, Ralphee is a happy cat who, like most kittens loves affection and causing all sorts of trouble wherever she goes.
Ralphee’s movements reminded me of waltzing mice, a breed of domestic mouse that is prized for its circular “dancing” movements, and was developed in China over 2000 years ago. In the mice, though, the curious movements are due to an inner ear problem, not a cerebellar problem. (Jerry’s father used to keep waltzing mice when he was a kid!) Ralphee also seems to have the Manx cat trait of a stump tail– not sure if she’s genetically Manx, or just lost her tail somehow.
I haven’t seen a lot of press about this in the U.S., so I’ll turn to our Canadian friends, including reader Diana MacPherson, who called this piece at the CBC to my attention.
The upshot is that it’s now technologically possible to make “smart guns” that can be fired only by their owner. This is accomplished through either fingerprint recognition, grip recognition, or wearing a special watch that synchs with the gun and arms it. Here’s a picture of a smart gun:
A man holds a prototype of a smart gun by Armatix during the International Guns Exhibition in Nuremberg in 2009. The smart gun is the first of its kind with a fingerprint recognition security system controlled by the security watch. (Reuters)
You’d think that would be a great thing. The gun could now be fired only by the owner, eliminating a lot of the unnecessary and tragic gun deaths that occur when, say, a kid gets hold of a loaded weapon, or someone else steals a gun to commit a crime.
But not to the right-wing gun lobby. No, they fear that this is the first step on the road to the government controlling all the guns, for, supposedly, smart-gun technology could enable the U.S. Gubbmint to stop ALL the guns from firing, eliminating our God-given right to have a lethal weapon. And so we have the weird situation in which the gun lobby not only opposes new kinds of guns, but also threatens those gun dealers who sell them. From the CBC piece, we get this:
One needs surf no further than the esteemed Forbes website to find this: “Smart guns may be susceptible to government tracking or jamming. How hard would it be for the government to require manufacturers to surreptitiously include in computer-enhanced weapons some circuitry that would allow law enforcement to track — or even to disable — the weapons?
Gun websites, which tend to take a more dire view than Forbes, are, well, up in arms.
According to Shotgun News: “There are people who won’t stop until we are disarmed. [Smart guns] are a danger to our rights, no more, no less.”
There is no end to this paranoid lunacy.
Take the case of Andy Raymond, who owns a gun shop called “Engage Armaments” in Maryland, where there is strict registration of guns, a mandatory training course, and a waiting period before you can pick up a gun you’ve bought. To me, Raymond seems rather extremist about guns, but he did want to sell smart guns in his shop:
So any new gun, to Raymond, is a good gun. Anything that can persuade cautious people to learn how to shoot is a good, American thing.
“I am pro-gun,” he told me at his shop this week, slapping together and dismantling weapons on the counter as he spoke. “I believe in the freedom to own a gun. Any gun. To me, you don’t have freedom unless you have freedom of choice. It’s like speech, or religion.”
But what happened? He and others were threatened for that!
The more militant wing of the gun-rights movement, though, has a different view. And when word got out that Raymond was going to offer the Armatix [see photo above] for sale, Engage Armament’s phone began to ring.
There were threats. Raymond, a massive, heavily muscled man, took some of the more menacing ones as death threats.
He quickly capitulated, and repudiated his plan to sell the Armatix.
He began sleeping in his store, frightened by an anonymous threat to burn it down.
In an attempt to appease his antagonists, he posted a video on his Facebook page justifying his decision, then apologizing, then suggesting in a fit of temper that the death threats should be leveled at anti-gun politicians, not him. The video has since been taken down.
Another merchant, the Oak Tree Gun Club in California, hastily renounced the Armatix a few weeks ago as well after a similarly ferocious reaction.
To use Randall McMurphy’s term, these people are bull-goose loonies. And they’re egged on by the good old National Rifle Association, the ultimate (and politically powerful) repository of gun lunacy in the U.S., which is against a New Jersey law that will require all guns to be smart guns within three years after the first one is sold:
The National Rifle Association, which is deeply suspicious of smart guns, opposes any such law, and its more radical allies are determined to keep the weapons out of America, period.
As the Shotgun News website put it: “Until the last anti-gunner gives up and goes to work on transgender rights … any retailers foolish enough to stock one should plan for bankruptcy.”
Note the clever comparison of gun control to emasculation.
This exchange between Bill Maher and Mark Pryor, the Democratic Senator from Arkansas, appeared on 9gag.com. You can watch the extract, which was recorded in 2009, here, and the full interview here. Make sure you scroll down to the final frame.
In April, Brandeis University, under pressure from misguided people decrying Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe,” as well as from the Council on American Islamic relation (CAIR; an organization that, under the guise of improving those relations, issues veiled threats about offending Muslims), rescinded an invitation for Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree. Hirsi Ali made a dignified response (here) and refused Brandeis’s invitation to come back some other time to engage in “discussion.”
It was a cowardly move for Brandeis, motivated solely by fear and political correctness. Hirsi Ali is in fact a hero: a woman who has basically given up the possibility of a normal life in the cause of improving the treatment of women under Islam. After the murder of her collaborator Theo van Gogh, and threats on her own life, as well as a political kerfuffle (the Dutch government first rescinded her citizenship because she made untruthful statement on her application for asylum, and then restored her citizenship), she moved to the U.S., where she then had difficulty getting a job. She still travels with armed guards, and I suspect that if they weren’t there, she would be killed rather soon.
When I wrote about all this a while back, the usual Muslim apologists appeared, decrying Hirsi Ali as unworthy of an honorary degree for four reasons: she lied on her application for asylum in the Netherlands; she said things that, to some, seemed to constitute praise for the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik; she made statements that were strongly anti-Islam (and thus was an “Islamophobe”; and she worked for a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Few of these commenters bothered to dig into the background of those accusations, so eager were they to smear her as an unworthy “Islamophobe.”
On his website yesterday, Sam Harris published a long conversation he had with Hirsi Ali, “Lifting the veil of ‘Islamophobia’.” I recommend that you read it, especially if you’re one of her critics. It’s not so much an interview as a mutual condemnation of the perfidies and violence of Islam, and of the silence of Islamic “moderates.” It’s a conversation between friends who are frustrated at the unwarranted sympathy or silence accorded to Muslim misdeeds and the condemnation of critics as “Islamophobes.”
Sam concentrates on the issues above that have led to Hirsi Ali—and Harris himself—being labelled as “Islamophobes.” You’ll learn the reason she was untruthful on her application for asylum (she feared retribution from her Canadian husband from an arranged marriage, retribution that indeed happened), what she meant when she talked about Breivik, and why she went to work for the AEI. The reason for that is because, cowed by Islam, no liberal think tank would hire her. So let’s correct that record right now:
Hirsi Ali: ” . . . So I approached Cynthia [Schneider, the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands under Clinton], and she took me to the Brookings Institute, and to Rand, and to Johns Hopkins, and to Georgetown—she took me to all these institutions, and there was no interest. They didn’t say it to my face, but I got the feeling that they were uncomfortable with what I had been saying about Islam.
Then, on the last day, just before I left the country, Cynthia suggested that we try the AEI. And I said something like “I can’t believe you’d take me there. It’s supposed to be a right-wing organization.” And she said, “Oh, come on. You Dutch people are too prejudiced against the U.S. Things here are really very different than you think. I was a Clinton appointee, and one of my best friends—one of Clinton’s best friends—Norm Ornstein, is there. So it’s not what you think it is. And it’s definitely not religious.”
So we went to the AEI, and I met with Norm Ornstein and a woman named Colleen Baughman, and they were so enthusiastic. They immediately introduced me to their president, who suggested that we talk again in a month. And we just kept talking. I spoke about my work; they told me about what they do. And I didn’t hear back from any of the other institutions that I had solicited.
Harris: So the truly mortifying answer to the question of why you are at the AEI is that no liberal institution would offer you shelter when you most needed it—and when your value to the global conversation about free speech, the rights of women, and other norms of civilization was crystal clear. And ever since, your affiliation with the one institution that did take you in has been used to defame you in liberal circles. Perfect.
Hirsi Ali: Well, it certainly seemed at the time that none of the other institutions were willing to talk about Islam in the way that I do—and specifically about its treatment of women.
. . . I find it sad. And you should know that during all my interviews with the AEI and my subsequent years there, they’ve always understood that I’m a liberal. No one within the organization has tried to change my mind about anything—not about Islam, or euthanasia, or abortion, or religion, or gay rights, or any of the other things that many of my colleagues have problems with. They’ve never opposed my atheism or confronted me with anything I have said in public. It’s a wonderful institution.
Let us not, then, hear anything more about her association with a conservative think tank. Rather than criticize her for working for the AEI, criticize the Brookings Institute and others for not hiring her.
There’s a lot more meat in their discussion, but you should read it yourself. It’s not short, but will teach you what happens when a Muslim woman goes up against the misogynistic tenets of her faith.
There’s one more thing I’d like to highlight. When Hirsi Ali moved to the U.S., she needed armed protection since the Dutch government would no longer pay for her bodyguards. That protection was purchased with the help of both the AEI and Harris himself, who solicited his friends and acquaintances. That’s a noble thing to do, but not all of Harris’s friends were on board:
Harris: As a relevant counterpoint, I should say that when I was raising money for your security, I got in touch with some of my contacts in the “moderate” Muslim community. In particular, I reached out to Reza Aslan, with whom I was on entirely cordial terms. I said, essentially, “Reza, wouldn’t it be great if the vast majority of Muslims who are moderate helped protect Ayaan from the minority who aren’t?” It seems to me undeniable that if people like Reza are going to argue that Islam is just like any other religion, they have a real interest in ensuring that people can safely criticize their faith—or even leave it.
But all Reza did was attack you as a bigot and deny, against all evidence, that you had any security concerns worth taking seriously. His response came as quite a shock to me, frankly. I was unprepared to encounter this level of moral blindness and ill will, especially at a moment when I was reaching out for help.
Aslan, as I’ve noted before, is a Muslim apologist and author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, a book that, to me, simply whitewashed the bad aspects of modern Islam, painting it as truly a religion of peace. How cowardly and hypocritical of him to refuse to help, and then attack Hirsi Ali as an Islamophobe! And believe me, she did have reason to fear for her life. Look what happened to Theo van Gogh, who helped produce the movie she wrote, “Submission“, about the mistreatment of women under Islam (from Wikipedia; my emphasis):
Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri as he was cycling to work on 2 November 2004 at about 9 o’clock in the morning, in front of the Amsterdam East borough office (stadsdeelkantoor), on the corner of the Linnaeusstraat and Tweede Oosterparkstraat. . . The killer shot van Gogh eight times with an HS2000handgun. Initially from his bicycle, Bouyeri fired several bullets at Van Gogh, who was hit, as were two bystanders. Wounded, Van Gogh ran to the other side of the road and fell to the ground on the cycle lane. According to eyewitnesses, Van Gogh’s last words were: “Mercy, mercy! We can talk about it, can’t we?”Bouyeri then walked up to Van Gogh, who was still lying down, and calmly shot him several more times at close range. Bouyeri then cut Van Gogh’s throat, and tried to decapitate him with a large knife, after which he stabbed the knife deep into Van Gogh’s chest, reaching his spinal cord. He then attached a note to the body with a smaller knife. Van Gogh died on the spot. The two knives were left implanted. The note was addressed and contained a death threat to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was subsequently forced to go into hiding, threatened Western countries and Jews and also referred to the ideologies of the Egyptian organization Takfir wal-Hijra.
Aslan is reprehensible, a conclusion I had already reached from reading his book. But this makes it infinitely worse. A man who argues that Islam is a peaceful religion should certainly help provide protection for someone whose life was threatened for criticizing it!
In honor of Hirsi Ali, I present the film Submission (11 minutes total), the movie for which van Gogh gave his life and for which Hirsi Ali will need lifelong protection. Watch it and see if you think it justifies Muslim outrage. It’s simply a work strongly critical of how Muslims treat women. I’m sure Hirsi Ali knew what it would provoke, but she wanted to show the truth. She truly is a hero, and surely doesn’t deserve the opprobrium heaped upon her by American liberals—and even some readers of this site.
A reptile at last! Reader Andrey sent several pictures of the famous Anolis, along with some information:
I saw the recent post and actually have something I can contribute. Attached you will find 2 photos I took of a male Anolis carolinensis that happened to be wandering around on my patio as I was enjoying Sunday breakfast outside. I managed to get a few good snaps, including two in which the little guy wanted to scare me off of his territory by showing me his red neck flap [JAC: in technical jargon, this is the “dewlap”]. Of note, the carolinensis species is native to the Southeast US (where I live) but is becoming displaced by the introduced Anolis sagrei (brown anole). It has caused a modification in behavior in which the native anole has ceded its traditional habitat and foraging territory lower to the ground for higher treetops and fences, which is precisely where I found this specimen.
And for the camera geeks out there, these were shot on a Canon Rebel T2i, with a Canon EF 100mm/f2.8 Macro USM at f/2.8, ISO 200, 1/200 shutter speed (both).
It’s Friday, and Hili wonders which seat can she take. And she wants to seize a carp!
Hili: Carpe diem, carpe diem, but where to go? A: Maybe you shouldn’t look for pleasures too far away?
Hili: Epicureanism and laziness are a bad combination.
In Polish:
Hili: Carpe diem, carpe diem, ale gdzie iść? Ja: Może nie szukaj przyjemności zbyt daleko? Hili: Epikureizm i lenistwo to zła kombinacja.
There is no limit to the ludicrous lengths the faithful will go to pay homage to their imaginary friends. But the next one that comes down the pike is always funny in a new way. And here’s one, as reported by the UK’s Rationalist Association. This one has gotten Spanish secularists (I’m glad there are some!) taking their government to court:
Spain’s gold medal of police merit is normally reserved for police who have died in terrorist attacks. So it came as a surprise when the country’s interior minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, decided instead to award it to an icon of the Virgin Mary in Malaga.
Announcing the award in February, Diaz congratulated the statue and her congregation for “maintaining a close collaboration with police, particularly during the acts celebrated in Holy Week, and for sharing police values such as dedication, caring, solidarity, and sacrifice”.
An icon gets an award for doing nothing! And it has values! How does Diaz know?
It’s a horrible embarrassment for a normally sensible country. And it isn’t the first time Diaz has pulled such a boneheaded move:
In 2012, he gave the highest honour of the Guardia Civil (the Spanish gendarmerie) to the Virgin of the Pillar in Zaragoza. This icon is the patron saint of the Guardia Civil, and Diaz paid tribute to the “deep roots of the patronage”. Last year, he suggested divine help was helping Spain out of the economic crisis, saying that Mother Teresa was “making important intercessions” for Spain “during these tough times”.
Fortunately, the secularists and the police, who are rightfully offended that a piece of plaster gets a medal instead of one of their bravest members, are made as hell and aren’t going to take it:
The decision has angered members of the police force. “Give the Virgin whatever you like, take her some flowers, make her the patron saint of our people, but don’t give her a police medal, least of all one reserved for police officers who have lost their lives in an attack,” José María Benito, a representative of the police officers’ union, told the online daily El Boletín.
It has also infuriated secularists. “The norm specifies clearly that the medal is given to people, not immaterial beings,” said Francisco Delgado of Secular Europe. “It’s meant to recognise exceptional acts of service by police.”
Along with the Movement Towards A Secular State (Movimiento hacia un estado laico), Secular Europe is taking the interior minister to court over the award. The country’s 1978 constitution officially enshrines the separation of church and state, but in practice the two have remained enmeshed.
These are hopeful signs in a country still staunchly religious.
