Caturday felid: In-bread cats

February 25, 2012 • 3:11 am

Okay, this is the only cat meme I know that’s based on population genetics.  Some wiseacre got the idea of making an “in-bread cat” by jamming a moggie’s head through a slice of bread.  It took off, and now we have dozens of these things: see Gawker’s piece “Breading has jumped the shark“, “Hot new internet meme: breading cats“, and “Best pictures of breaded cats.”

Here are a few:

Siamese cats, with their contrasting faces, are particularly attractive when breaded:

And we can’t forget the floury comestible of our Hispanic friends:

There’s also a Facebook page, of course.

If you really must, bread your cat and send it to me. I’ll post a few, Ceiling Cat help me. . .

The Mormons baptize Anne Frank

February 24, 2012 • 10:45 am

Like several faiths, the Mormons have the odious practice of proxy baptism, in which one can baptize a living person in the name of a dead heathen, thus ensuring that that heathen will go to heaven. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

Baptism by proxy has its roots in early Mormonism, when adherents were troubled by the fact that their ancestors had died before the 1830 founding of what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith taught that baptism was necessary for salvation and that only those baptisms performed by the true, restored church counted. That left the vast bulk of humanity on the outside looking in.

Smith wanted to offer a second chance to those who had died. Bringing to life an obscure New Testament passage about believers being “baptized for the dead,” he announced that his followers could seek baptism on behalf of their departed kin.

This, by the way, explains the Mormons’ fascination with genealogy, for they need to know their ancestors to ensure that those ancestors enter the Kingdom of God.

The Mormon Church has gone nuts with proxy baptism, conferring it on everyone from Albert Einstein and George Washington to Barack Obama’s mother. They even baptized the parents of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

The Mormons’ obsession with baptizing Jews and Holocaust survivors (really, why do they want to do that?) finally raised Jewish hackles, and the Church has vowed to stop turning Jews into posthumous Mormons.  Yet the madness continues—in an obsession with baptizing Anne Frank. As USA Today (and other places) reports,

Radkey [Helen Radkey, an ex-Mormon who investigates issues of proxy baptism] said she discovered that Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank, who died at Bergen Belsen death camp in 1945 at age 15, was baptized by proxy on Saturday. Mormons have submitted versions of her name at least a dozen times for proxy rites and carried out the ritual at least nine times from 1989 to 1999, according to Radkey. But Radkey says this is the first time in more than a decade that Frank’s name has been discovered in a database that can be used both for genealogy and also to submit a deceased person’s name to be considered for proxy baptism — a separate process,according to a spokesman for the church. The database is only open to Mormons.

A screen shot of the database sent by Radkey shows a page for Frank stating “completed” next to categories labeled “Baptism” and “Confirmation,” with the date Feb. 18, 2012, and the name of the Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple.

From a HuffPo article (click to enlarge):

Well, it’s all madness, for the Mormons’ zeal for baptism (based on Scripture, of course) is just as evidentially unfounded as the Jews’ taking offense in the name of their God, but, really, the Mormons ought to have some decency here and lay off.

On a lighter note, reader Diane G. notes that we can get revenge, for on this site you can convert a dead Mormon into being gay. I’ve converted Joseph Smith:

And be sure to see Bill Maher’s hilarious unbaptism of Mitt Romney’s dead father-in-law (who in life was an atheist).

But this brings up a serious question: how do we deal with political candidates who are religious? Of course they shouldn’t be prevented from running for office, but how far can we evaluate them based on their beliefs?

The United States has an invidious history of this: John F. Kennedy was widely criticized for being Catholic, and had to make an explicit statement that he would separate his faith from his goverenance.  We’ve had no Jews as President, and it’ll be a cold day in July when we have an atheist President.

Can we still hold candidates accountable for their beliefs, though? Can we even ask them about their beliefs? The Wall Street Journal says this:

But Mr. Romney can’t take responsibility for all the members of his church or its hierarchy. To be sure, one might reasonably ask him to comment on his church’s century-and-a-quarter denial of full membership to persons of African descent, a ban that did not end until Mr. Romney was 30 years old. Like most any human institution, the Mormon Church has a great deal of explaining and apologizing to do for its past mistakes. In this instance of proxy baptism, though, the level of outrage simply does not match the purported offense.

I go back and forth on this.  I agree with the WSJ comment above, in that acceptance of (erstwhile) Church policy on minorities does have a direct effect on governance, but I’m not so sure that candidates should be asked publicly to explain or defend their faiths unless those faiths might impact their views and actions in office. At the very least they should say that they’ll keep their faiths separate from their governance.

But still, with loonies like Rick Santorum— who believes in Satan—on the loose, I don’t think I’d even consider voting for a candidate whose religious beliefs were so extreme. Obama, well, yes, but fundies like Santorum—hell no, even if they were Democrats. (That’s very rare, of course).

Question for readers: how seriously would you consider religious beliefs when evaluating candidates for government office? (I realize that this is more a problem in the U.S. than elsewhere.)

An Irish comedian discusses evolution and creationism

February 24, 2012 • 8:18 am

Here’s a bit of Irish levity after the last post on the secularization of that country.

Dara Ó Briain is an Irish comedian and television host and a staunch atheist who describes himself as “ethnically Catholic.”  Here’s his humorous take on evolution and creationism. Though his description of natural selection leaves a bit to be desired, it still shows that evolution via selection isn’t “random”, but involves a concatenation of a random process (the generation of variation) and a nonrandom one (the disposition of that variation by selection).  And he got the appendix right.

I wish I could make my students laugh this much while teaching the evidence for evolution.

x

Guest post: Ireland is also more secular than we thought

February 24, 2012 • 4:46 am

Grania Spingies, of Atheist Ireland, has contributed a short post about a European country that most of us see as religiously retrograde. It turns out that it’s far more secular than we thought.

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Ireland may also be a lot more liberal and secular than some would have you believe

by Grania Spingies

Last week the Ipsos MORI polls conducted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason revealed that the majority of self-defined Christians living in the UK tend to have more far more liberal and secular views than those promoted by Christian campaign groups. The reaction from those groups has been predictably both outraged and outrageous, but the message is fairly clear: the highly conservative values espoused by such lobbies do not reflect those of the Christian majority on whose behalf they claim to speak.

A recent government-sponsored poll shows very similar attitudes in Ireland. The poll is based on  the Irish Referendum in 2011 (in Ireland the Constitution can be amended only by popular referendum), and was conducted by the Irish government for political reasons: to find out why people voted as they did. Unlike the Dawkins Foundation poll, then, this one was not conducted by a pro-secularist organization, and thus cannot be criticized on that count.

The poll shows that despite being a “Catholic” country (the 2006 Census put the proportion of Catholics above 86%) and in spite of Irish religious lobby groups insisting that the conservative status quo remains, it seems that a comfortable majority of Irish people do not take their cues about morality from the Church at all. In fact, an article in Thursday’s Irish Examiner by June McEnroe shows that the Irish overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage, and also do not support Ireland’s ill-conceived new Blasphemy Law.

The poll found:

* 73% believe same-sex marriages should be allowed in the Constitution.

* 53% believe the offence of blasphemy should be removed from the Constitution.

* 51% believe references to women’s life within the home should be removed from the Constitution.

(The Constitution has a rather paternalistic view of women which, while it does not preclude women from working, tacitly endorses the idea that women are to be seen primarily as mothers.  Here’s one section:

1° […] the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

2° The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.)

These results are heartening but perhaps not surprising. In spite of a recent history dominated by the Roman Catholic Church that has resulted in almost all Irish schools being faith schools and led to many fights for the legal right of individuals to do such things as use contraception (1985), get a divorce (1994), or obtain an abortion (still illegal in Ireland, with its elimination being vigorously campaigned against by the Church), it seems that Ireland, much like the rest of Western Europe, prefers a secular and enlightened society too.

One thing seems clear: religious think-tanks and lobby groups do not represent anything like the numbers of people who tick the same religion box in surveys, and shouldn’t be allowed to insinuate that they do.


Without a Song

February 24, 2012 • 4:34 am

Here’s some more pop music from the 50s.

This beautiful song was written by Billy Youmans, Billy Rose, and Edward Eliscu in 1929, and has been recorded many times by people as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Sonny Rollins, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and The Supremes.

My favorite version is a jazz rendition by Billy Eckstine, but it’s not available on YouTube (you can hear a 30-second snippet here). But the underrated Perry Como (who, by the way, started life as a barber near my father’s hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania) recorded a creditable version in 1951 (if the video doesn’t work, go here):

The original lyrics were different from those above, and expressed the racism of the time. The original second verse included the lines, “a darkie’s born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”  (Darkie is an archaic and derogatory American term for “black”.) You can hear those words at 3:03 in this early version by Frank Sinatra, recorded with Tommy Dorsey in 1941. Como changed the lyrics to “a young one’s born,” while Eckstine, who was half black, sang “a man is born.”

A menage of three takes: Como’s later live recording, Mario Lanza’s gutsy version, and a recording by Roy Hamilton—with an introduction by Elvis, of all people—can be found here.

Oh, and Canonsburg immortalized its favorite son with a statue (be sure to read the inscription).

h/t: Hempenstein

Video of a very rare whale

February 23, 2012 • 12:10 pm

ABC news (the Australian one) has just posted footage of an extremely rare whale, a Shepherd’s beaked whale (Tasmacetus shepherdi) off the southern coast of Australia.  This video footage (at the link above; I can’t embed it) is the first ever taken of this species, previously known from only 6 sighting and 29 strandings.  It’s well worth a look; the whale appears to be swimming in a pod with other species.

Here’s what the beaked whale looks like; this one is from a stranding:

It’s small for a whale; here’s its size relative to that of humans:

Its biology is of course poorly known: what little we do know is described here. It appears to be a deep-water feeder endemic to southern waters. (There are 21 species of beaked whales, and many are poorly known). This is the range of Tasmacetus shepherdi:

h/t: Matthew Cobb

John Gray purports to review de Boutton, but really reviews atheism

February 23, 2012 • 9:30 am

At least half a dozen readers have called my attention to John Gray’s review in The New Statesman of Alain de Botton’s new book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.  de Botton, you’ll recall, is the guy who wants humanists and atheists to adopt the trappings of religion—weekly meetings, sermons, holidays and the like—to enforce our deep need for social ritual.  de Botton also proposed the erection of an atheist temple, though that appears to have fallen by the wayside.

I don’t have much use for de Botton’s ideas, but I feel sorry for his having fallen into the clutches of Gray, who appears to be a nasty piece of work. I haven’t followed his writings, but he’s described as the head book reviewer for The New Statesman. His review of de Botton’s book, which is mixed, turns out to be a review (and a critical one) of atheism.  And it’s snide in the way that only a pompous British intellectual can be snide (recall Terry Eagleton):

A few snippets from Gray:

The paradox of an immensely powerful mind mistrusting the intellect is not new. Pascal needed intellectual humility because he had so many reasons to be proud of his intelligence. It is only the illiteracy of the current generation of atheists that leads them to think religious practitioners must be stupid or thoughtless. Were Augustine, Maimonides and al-Ghazali – to mention only religious thinkers in monotheist traditions – lacking in intellectual vitality? The question is absurd but the fact it can be asked at all might be thought to pose a difficulty for de Botton.

I don’t think Augustine, Maimonides, and the like were stupid.  Who has ever claimed that? And they’re not thoughtless, for they had lots of thoughts. It’s just that those thoughts were misguided, and theologians who follow them are even more misguided, since the history of science has eaten away whatever evidence for God existed for these men.  The people who are really misguided—indeed, deluded—are modern theologians who try to find the missing evidence for God and even speculate on God’s nature. They are wasting their time and their intellect. Think of all the ways society would be better if theologians were engaged in more rational pursuits!

I don’t have a problem with Biblical studies, for that’s an empirically based discipline that aims to reconstruct the origins of religion and its scriptures, nor do I have a problem with comparative religion classes. I do have a problem with people getting paid, as they are in my own University, to speculate about the mind of God and make up stuff trying to demonstrate his existence, omnipotence, and general character.

Thomas Jefferson had the right idea when he founded the University of Virginia: he dictated that “a professorship of theology should have no place in our institution.” And indeed, U. Va. has none now. It’s a pity that institutions as august as Harvard and The University of Chicago do.

More from Gray on de Botton:

Most people think that atheists are bound to reject religion because religion and atheism consist of incompatible beliefs. De Botton accepts this assumption throughout his argument, which amounts to the claim that religion is humanly valuable even if religious beliefs are untrue. He shows how much in our way of life comes from and still depends on religion – communities, education, art and architecture and certain kinds of kindness, among other things. I would add the practice of toleration, the origins of which lie in dissenting religion, and sceptical doubt, which very often coexists with faith.

Today’s atheists will insist that these goods can be achieved without religion. In many instances this may be so but it is a question that cannot be answered by fulminating about religion as if it were intrinsically evil. Religion has caused a lot of harm but so has science. Practically everything of value in human life can be harmful. To insist that religion is peculiarly malignant is fanaticism, or mere stupidity.

Two this I have two responses.  Yes, “these goods can be achieved without religion.” They are, regularly, in Europe, particularly in northern Europe.

Second: the comparative value of science and religion.  I offer Gray a choice: the choice between living in a world in which religion never arose but science did, or a world in which science never arose but religion did.  Which would you choose?

Ergo science.

Eight dead because four Qur’ans burned

February 23, 2012 • 7:30 am

UPDATE: Note that the Qur’ans were apparently burned in private, not publicly, but some Muslims found the not-quite-consumed volumes and publicized it.

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How many lives does it take to expiate four charred books?  As you probably know, a few copies of the Qur’an were incinerated by Americans at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. According to the BBC:

US officials apologised on Tuesday after Korans were “inadvertently” put in an incinerator at Bagram airbase.

Officials at Bagram reportedly believed Taliban prisoners were using the books to pass messages to each other.

The charred remains of the volumes were found by local labourers.

That set off a series of riots that are continuing. Six Afghanis were killed by their own police, and now, according to today’s New York Times, two NATO troops have been killed as well. That is eight lives snuffed out by an accidental burning of words on paper—eight people who had friends and family who loved them. Think how you’d feel if your husband, daughter, or best friend were suddenly taken from you by a bullet.  Now multiply those feelings by eight: that’s the amount of pain that this incident has caused. And that, of course, is only the latest in a string of  deadly Islam-inspired “offense.”

President Obama has issued an apology:

“I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident,” Mr. Obama said in a letter to President Hamid Karzai. “I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies.”

The letter was handed to Mr. Karzai by the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan C. Crocker, on Thursday afternoon in Kabul.

The acting spokesman for the American Embassy in Kabul, Mark Thornburg, confirmed the wording of the letter and that it had been hand delivered by Mr. Crocker to Mr. Karzai.

“The error was inadvertent,” Mr. Obama said. “I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”

Okay, apologies are necessary to stem this lunacy, but must they really discipline those who made the mistake?

It’s just pieces of paper.