Stupidest atheist-bashing post of the year

December 31, 2013 • 7:45 am

If there was a theme to atheist-bashing this year, it was this: Atheists are Religious, Too. Those who fly that canard fail to realize its irony: the implicit claim that “they are just as bad as the faithful.”

At the last minute, The American Spectator, a conservative monthly, wins the yearly prize for sheer hatefulness and stupidity with its December 24 post, “The God of no gods,” by Jeffrey Lord, described as “a former Reagan White House political director and author” (wouldn’t you know?)  The author is apparently obsessed with gays and his post repeatedly denigrates them.

It starts like this and then goes downhill:

. . . there’s nothing like being out of the closet as Christophobes.

Christophobes being defined here as those with fear or contempt of Christians or those who believe in God, not to mention those who exhibit behavior based on that feeling of fear and contempt for Christians and believing in God.

Lord, of course, is too thick to know the difference between contempt for superstition and contempt for the superstitious.

But how, exactly, are atheists religious?

It’s time.

Time to recognize that contrary to all the endless PR, atheists and Christophobes in fact have a God. It’s time to demand formal recognition of atheism and Christophobes for what they really are: followers of the religion that worships The God of No God.

. . . Notice that cross that was removed? What was in its place?

What replaced the crèche and the cross, and in fact is everywhere according to atheists, is The God of No God. Nothing. Or something… liberalism, the Democrats, being gay, abortion, having money, computers, the Internet, pornography, television, the environment, animals… the list is endless. But that interminable list always boils down to one thing: The God of No God. Wherever the object of worship is not related to Jesus Christ, the Almighty, Allah, Buddha — which is to say a spiritual deity… The God of No God demands…say again demands…your allegiance.

Again we see the conflation of dogmatic belief in the unevidenced with the passionate advocacy of causes. I hate to say this, but that reflects either sheer stupidity or willful ignorance. To people like Lord, feeling strongly about anything is the same as being religious.

And where are those godless heathens?

Where to find the worshipers of The God of No God?

Listen to the voice of Wilson Cruz, a spokesman for GLAAD. Mr. Cruz’s God of No God is gay marriage, and with the certitude of the Pharisees to Jesus or the Stalinists to Russians, discussing the Duck Dynasty flare-up with CNN Cruz said with all the fervor of a God of No God zealot that Phil Robertson “needs to get in line.” Translation: You will worship my God of No God — gay marriage — or else. Apparently Mr. Cruz skipped all those classes on bullying. He must have been too busy reading up on Hitler’s Brownshirts.

GLAAD is the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an organization that fights discrimination against homosexuals.

But no matter that many gay people, like Andrew Sullivan, are religious—that doesn’t matter. They are in favor of gay marriage, and that’s enough for Lord to somehow lump them with atheists. And of course he plays the Hitler card, although Hitler wasn’t an atheist. What a mismosh of hatred, bigotry, and sheer idiocy!

Lord (what an ironic name) then lists “The Ten Commandments of the God of No God.” I’ll spare you most of them, but here are three:

• First Commandment — GLAAD version: Thou shalt have no other gods before you other than gay marriage. Sieg Heil.

Note again reference to Hitler. You can’t get more hateful than this.  (And they call atheists strident and mlitant!) Lord is on the losing side of this battle, as the moral arc is bending towards recognition that gay behavior is not only common, but perfectly fine, and in a decade or so gay marriage will be legal everywhere. The American Spectator, besides being on the wrong side of history, should be embarrassed about this commandment.

• Fourth Commandment — A&E version: Remember the LGBT movement, to keep it holy.

“LGBT” is “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered.”.  Would Lord have us see these people as immoral? I guess so, and that’s also despicable.

• Fifth Commandment — National Organization of Women version: Honor thy liberal feminists and know that Hillary Clinton but not Sarah Palin is holy.

Apparently Lord is not a big fan of women’s rights, either. Most of us prefer Hillary Clinton over Sarah Palin because Palin is a reactionary dumbbell while Clinton is smart, experienced, and progressive.

Over the past year I’ve become strengthened in my view that atheism and liberalism are natural partners, for religion won’t disappear until we eliminate its root causes: social inequalities and the refusal of governments and individuals to help the least advantaged. It’s curious because, after all, one of Jesus’s Biblical teachings was love of the poor.  In that respect, Christianity contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Lord has seven more commandments, but you get the idea.

p.s. Alternet has a list of the five worst high-profile attacks on atheism of 2013.

h/t: Jim, Barry

My birthday noms

December 31, 2013 • 6:52 am

Because I was being feted on my birthday by being taken to a Polish restaurant in Płock (the line through the “l” makes it pronounced as a “w”), I ate sparsely at lunch. Besides tomatoes and bread (not shown), there was an assortment of kielbasa (Polish sausages) and discs of the famous smoked cheese from the Tatra mountains, oscypek (lower right):

Lunch

Płock is a 35-minute drive from Dobrzyn, and is situated on the Vistula. Although we arrived at about 4 pm for some sightseeing, the sun was already setting:

Plock

The Płock Cathedral, or the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Masovia, is one of the oldest in Poland, founded in the 11th century and reconstructed in the sixteenth after a fire. It’s a lovely Romanesque structure, and we were allowed to go inside, but it was too dark to photograph.

Cathedral

Meanwhile, in front of the town hall there was a skating rink. Many of the skaters were quite skilled; the sport is obviously common in this wintery land.

Skating

On to the important stuff: birthday noms! We went to the Karczma pod Strzecha restaurant, highly recommended for its Polish food (menu here, conversion is about 3 zlotys to the dollar; see also TripAdvisor recommendation here).  Here’s a shot from its website. It’s a homey and welcoming place:

Screen shot 2013-12-31 at 4.00.20 AM

We began with a traditional and complimentary appetizer, smalec (pork fat mixed with onions and apples), it’s like non-kosher schmalz, and is to be spread on bread. It was delicious, especially with the pickles:

Fat

My first course was bacon-wrapped prunes, which were fantastic. The bacon was much thicker and chewier than American bacon. (Food police: do not criticize my diet here; I eat like this only on vacations and special occasions. Critical posts will be deleted!)

Bacon wrapped prunes

Then a delicious bowl of Polish borscht, or beet soup.  This one was Lithuanian style, with meat-filled dumplings.

Borscht

And the pièce de résistance, potato pancakes with goulash. Potato pancakes are a staple of Polish and Jewish cuisine (Jews know them as latkes), and one of my favorite foods. These were hot, crispy, and scrumptious. I liked that they put the meat on the side; too often it’s ladled on top of the pancakes, which then become soggy. This was all washed down with a mug of cold piwo (beer).

Latkes & goulash

Małgorzata had mushroom-filled pierogi (dumplings) which I photographed and also sampled (they were excellent):

Pierogis

Oy, was I full: no room for dessert! It was a great birthday meal, and thanks to my hosts for the treat.

An explosion of Opiliones

December 31, 2013 • 2:06 am

by Matthew Cobb

If you’re phobic about Arachnids, move along quickly!

These things popped into my Twi**er feed. The first I can’t embed as it’s one of those gif-esque 6 second Vine thingies that Twi**er have invented and WordPress doesn’t like the embed script.

Here’s the link and here’s a verbal description: chap/chapess (user ‘Paglo?’) pokes a furry looking bit of grot in what looks like the edge of a swimming pool. And then something happens, involving Opiliones (or harvestmen, or daddylonglegs – for more common names, see at the end)…

Here’s another example of the same phenomenon, from Arizona:

and another

and another, less dramatic:

My copy of the superb Harvestmen: The Biology of Opiliones by Ricardo Pinto-da-rocha, Glauco Machado and Gonzalo Giribet is at work, so I can’t investigate why these species of Opiliones apparently have an affinity for grouping together in furry objects (though if it’s for camouflage it would seem pretty damn effective!). Can any arachnologists (opilionogists?) chip in?

I can’t emphasise enough how good that book is, by the way: you can read my rave review from the Times Literary Supplement here. Earlier in the year, arachnologist Chris Buddle tw**ted the best bits as he read it, under the hashtag #OpilionesProject. You can read 10 fun facts Chris learned along the way here.

Here are some of my own fave things about harvestmen, taken from some of the slides for my second year lectures on invertebrates.

• 6000 species known (really 10,000?)

• Found up to 4000m

• Virtually nothing known about African, tropical Asian or Amazonian species

• Earliest known specimen from the Rhynie chert in Scotland, about 400 MY old (fantastic pics here).

• Omnivorous, but many carnivorous (though not venomous).

• Can eat fungus or bananas or cappuccino mousse…

• Masticate food (unlike spiders)

• Generally XY sex determination

• Internal fertilization – male penis is everted version of ovipositor

• Not all of them look like classic form. Can be short and stubby or have very nasty grabby chelicerae (front appendages shared by spiders, scorpions, sea spiders etc)

• Generally only 1 pair of eyes

• Do not produce silk

• No pedicel connecting tagmata, externally segmented abdomen

• Latin name comes from Opilio (”shepherd”), allegedly because shepherds in some parts of the world walked around on stilts (honest!).

• Various common names, many of which have to do with harvesting:

Kosec (“reaper”) –  Slovakian,

Hooiwagen (“haywagon”) – Dutch,

Pedro – Spanish (St Peter’s Day)

Zatomushi (“blind bug”) – Japanese

Lukki – Finnish (means nothing!)

h/t Morgan Jackson (@BioInFocus) and Bug G. Membracid (@bug_girl)

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

December 31, 2013 • 1:00 am
Hili and I join Andrzej and Malgorzata in wishing everyone a Happy 2014.
Hili: What are you doing?
Jerry: I’m thinking.*
Hili: Me too. I think that this year will be great for you, for Miranda, and for all of us.
Jerry: Why do you think so?
Hili: Because we like to like each other.

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(Note Emma the d*g asleep to the right.)
In Polish:
Hili: Co robisz?
Jerry: Myślę.
Hili: Ja też. Myślę, że ten rok będzie wspaniały, dla ciebie, dla Mirandy i dla nas wszystkich.
Jerry: Dlaczego tak myślisz?
Hili: Bo lubimy się lubić.
“Miranda” is of course Miranda Hale, whose articles are translated by Andrzej and Malgorzata, and who compiles The Hili Dialogues on a tumblr site.
_________
*Actually, I was sleeping.

Hili’s depredations

December 31, 2013 • 12:50 am

When I let Hili in this morning (it is frosty and -1C), she had brought a present with her.  It’s obviously some kind of rodent, but I thought readers might be able to identify it as to species.  (I am not a mammalogist.)

I must say that I have a pang of anguish when I see something like this, even though mousing is supposed to be a virtue in cats. This, however, was an outdoor rodent.

P1040988

P1040989

I have always been dubious that cats actually bring these things as presents to their owners, but as soon as I finished photographing the unfortunate rodent, Hili grabbed it and brought it inside, with the clear intention of nomming it. (She was grabbed and separated from her prey, to her loud consternation.)  It almost seems as if she wanted us to see it before she ate it.

Jesus appears in a shower

December 30, 2013 • 2:24 pm

This shower (not a staged phot!o) is bound to become a relic, and were I the reader who sent it, Rik Gern, I’d be prepared to be inundated by Catholics. There’s money to be made!

Gern’s caption for this photo is “Jebus is washing you.”

Jebus_Is_Washing_You

Gern, by the way, was the owner of Kitt E. Katt, the subject of two posts called “Stray cat: a love story” (here and here).

Readers’ cats: Pixie

December 30, 2013 • 12:22 pm

I was surprised but pleased to get an email about my New Republic Douthat piece from Richard Posner, a colleague at the University of Chicago as well as a very famous legal scholar and federal appellate court judge. Besides his day job as judge, he teaches classes at the UC Law School, has written several dozen books, and also contributes to two websites. He was first in his law school class at Harvard, edited the Harvard Law Review, and in the Sixties clerked for Justice William Brennan at the Supreme Court. I’d call the man an overachiever.

Posner’s Wikipedia page notes the following, and you’ll see what part I glommed onto (I’ve bolded that part for n00bs):

Richard Allen Posner (/ˈpoʊznər/; born January 11, 1939) is an American jurist, legal theorist and economist. He is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a leading figure in the field of law and economics.

Posner is the author of nearly 40 books on jurisprudence, economics, and several other topics, including Economic Analysis of Law, The Economics of Justice, The Problems of Jurisprudence, Sex and Reason, Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, and The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Posner as the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century. He is also a self-described “cat person” and is devoted to his maine coon, Pixie.

. . .  In December 2004, Posner started a joint blog with Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker. He also has a blog at The Atlantic, where he discusses the financial crisis.

So of course, after discussing various legal issues with the good judge, my first thought was to take advantage of our new acquaintanceship to request a picture of and paragraph about Pixie. Posner kindly complied, and here is her photo and story:

She is a beauty, as you can see; also very intelligent; but above all affectionate, which is rare in my experience of cats. My wife and I have had cats (just one at a time) since before we were married, which means more than 51 years ago, and Pixie is the first one who actually likes me (gives me frequent nuzzles, follows me around, lies on my computer keyboard, causing chaos). I strongly recommend the breed–Maine Coon–and also buying a cat from a breeder, because breeders are very concerned with raising good-natured animals, as otherwise they don’t have a chance in a cat show–not that we would ever “show” a cat.

IMG00048-20100419-1241 (2)
Pixie as paperweight for the New York Times