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.
Tuesday is the cruelest day, but we have TWO Hili dialogues (the second one, a groaner, is in English only). HIli is on the local well:
A: What are you looking for on this well?
Hili: A good way to get down.
Ja: Czego szukasz na tej studni?
Hili: Dobrego sposobu jak zejść na ziemię.
Hili: Well, well, well, what a beautiful bush.
If I could only get to Japan, pronto! This is #1 on my animal-interaction bucket list.
Kawaii!!!!
h/t: P
This accurate depiction of theology comes from reader Pliny the In Between, who posts his artwork at Evolving Perspectives. I dedicate it to David Bentley Hart, who espouses an apophatic God but appears to worship a bearded one, or at least one who appeared on earth as Jesus:
If you want a quick-and-dirty, but informative, take on this morning’s execrable 5-4 Supreme Court decision allowing municipal prayers in Greece, New York, read the analysis at Religion Clause, a site devoted to church-state issues. It breaks down the justices’ decisions (there was a lot of dissent, even among the majority), while avoiding editorializing. We can do that later. (I haven’t yet read the decisions and dissents.)
The most frightening thing on there, though, was this (my emphasis):
An opinion by Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, explained their refusal to join Part II-B of Justice Kennedy’s opinion. They argued that the Establishment Clause should not be seen as being applicable to the states.
Do we need to remind Scalia, who is an “originalist” (i.e., one who adheres to what he sees as the original intent of the U.S. Constitution’s writers), what the Establishment Clause is? It’s at the beginning of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
My piece on Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett has been heavily rewritten, combined with some other stuff, and published by The New Republic as “The three-drug death penalty cocktail is a mess.” (It takes about 2.5 hours to rewrite a website post for a column.)
If you love Professor Ceiling Cat, who has hearts on his boots, go over and give it a click, engaging in discussion if you’d like.
Oh, and I’ll be discussing this piece (and the morality of executions) on WDEL talk radio (Delaware) at about 11:45 Chicago time (12:45 p.m. Eastern time and 5:45 p.m. London time); you can listen live here (click on “Listen Now!” at upper left). It’ll be only a 4-5 minute interview, and the start time may be off a few minutes.
I dreaded this decision but didn’t have a lot of hope for any other result: the Supreme Court just allowed the town of Greece, in upstate New York, to begin its council meeting with a prayer. The rationale: “it’s traditional.” The vote was the usual 5-4, and, if you know your Court, you can guess with 100% accuracy who voted on each side.
This just happened this morning, but the New York Times reports:
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a town in upstate New York may begin its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said “ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.”
Town officials said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, the federal appeals court in New York said, almost all of the chaplains were Christian.
The pervasive Christianity of those prayers was the reason why the appeals court overruled the city of Greece, but the Supreme Court then overruled the appeals court.
The appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, agreed that the 1983 decision [a ruling that the Nebraska legislature could open its sessions with prayers] did not govern the case before it.
“A substantial majority of the prayers in the record contained uniquely Christian language,” Judge Guido Calabresi wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court. “Roughly two-thirds contained references to ‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Your Son’ or the ‘Holy Spirit.’”
Welcome to the theocracy! All I can suggest now is that atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Pastafarians, and Satanists flood the legislature with prayers. Of course, that won’t happen because the prayers are almost always offered by either members of the elected body or their official chaplains.
This Supreme Court has done more to obstruct progress in this country than even the Senate and House. And of course members like Alito and Roberts were chosen for just that purpose.
When I think about how thin the evidence for a god is—much less the Christian God—and how often its existence is nevertheless rammed down our throats by the faithful, I am sickened. It’s not a good day today.
Just when I think Southern legislators and judges can’t make themselves look any more stupid, someone comes along to prove me wrong. In this case it’s the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore. You probably remember that a judge refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall and also had a pre-session prayer every day. That was Moore. He lost the prayer issue after the state (at the behest of the ACLU and others) filed a lawsuit, but somehow the Ten Commandments remained.
Later, as Chief Justice (an elected position, and Moore is, of course, a Republican), he had a large stone Ten Commandments monument erected in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building in 2001. He again faced lawsuits over violating the First Amendment, lost in a series of appeals, but vowed to keep the monument anyway. (That, by the way, is an important judge refusing to adhere to the law.) The other judges overruled him, and the monument was removed in 2004. Here’s the monument before it was deep-sixed:
Moore also tried to uphold the antiquated Alabama statute against homosexual behavior. He lost that one when the U.S. Supreme Court declared such statutes illegal. In 2003, Moore was removed from office for his religiously-motivated intransigence, but it’s a testimony to the right-winginess of Alabama that he was again re-elected Chief Justice in 2012.
And now he’s back in the news, spreading his religious fervor. According to The Raw Story, Moore, in a recent speech, declared that the First Amendment applied (get this) only to Christians (see video below)!
Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.
“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”
He then noted that he loves talking to lawyers, because he is a lawyer who went to “a secular law school,” so he knows that “in the law, [talking about God] just isn’t politically correct.” He claimed that this is why America has “lost its way,” and that he would be publishing a pamphlet “this week, maybe next” that contained copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thereby proving that all the people “who found this nation — black, white, all people, all religions, all faiths” knew that America was “about God.”
Chief Justice Moore later defined “life” via Blackstone’s Law — a book that American lawyers have “sadly forgotten” — as beginning when “the baby kicks.” “Today,” he said, “our courts say it’s not alive ’til the head comes out.”
“Now,” he continued, “if technology’s supposed to increase our knowledge, how did we become so stupid?” Discussing Thomas Jefferson’s use of “life” in the Declaration of Independence, he said that “when [Jefferson] put ‘life’ in there, it was in the womb — we know it begins at conception. Why aren’t we going the right way instead of the wrong way?”
He later said the “pursuit of happiness” meant following God’s law, because “you can’t be happy unless you follow God’s law, and if you follow God’s law, you can’t help but be happy.”
“It’s all about God,” he continued. “We’ve made ‘life’ a decision taken by man,” he said, and “taken ‘liberty,’ and converted it to ‘licentiousness. We’ve taken ‘pursuit of happiness,’ and reduced it to materialism.”
What a litany of fail!
I’m appalled that such a man can mouth such idiocy. And I’m even more appalled that Alabamans, knowing his views and actions, chose to re-elect him. Of course the state harbors sensible citizens (I know a few), but, sweet Ceiling Cat, they should get the hell out of there and let the state secede!
Now if the First Amendment (freedom of speech and of religion) applies only to Christians, then it has no purpose at all, for nobody else is given those freedoms. What does it mean if only one religion has the right to proselytize and to speak without censorship? One might as well declare Alabama—and, if Moore had his way, the U.S.—a theocracy. He should be removed from office again, simply on the grounds that he openly opposes the U.S. Constitution.
Here’s a report showing the loon spouting his stuff: