Snake handlers not charged for violating state law; “religious freedom” cited

January 14, 2014 • 1:03 pm

One of the peculiarities of American evangelical Christianity is the bizarre practice of “snake handling” by some Southern sects. I’ve posted about this several times (see here, here, and here); the practice, which involves handling venomous snakes (usually rattlesnakes) is based on two Biblical verses:

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. (Luke 10:19).

So much for those who take the Bible metaphorically. Do these people have a “wrong” understanding of Scripture?

At any rate, according to the SunHerald.com, a paper serving the Mississipi coast, a pastor in Tennessee was acquited of handling snakes—a violation of state law—on grounds of religious freedom.

After a hearing on Wednesday, a grand jury decided not to indict the Rev. Andrew Hamblin on charges of violating a state ban on possessing venomous snakes.

In November, state officials seized 53 serpents — including rattlesnakes, copperheads and exotic breeds — from the Tabernacle Church of God in LaFollette, Tenn., where Hamblin is pastor.

Hamblin and his church say the Bible commands them to handle the snakes in worship. They’ve been featured in a National Geographic television series, “Snake Salvation.”

But state law bans the possession of venomous snakes.

Officials from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency cited Hamblin with 53 counts of violating the ban. Each count carried a maximum sentence of almost a year in jail.

Hamblin argued that the ban violates congregations’ religious liberty.

He was thrilled by the grand jury’s decision.

“I’m ecstatic,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. “All the headlines should read ‘Snake handlers have religious rights in Tennessee.’ “

What the grand jury did here was, in effect, a form of “jury nullification,” in which someone believed to be guilty is acquitted (or, in this case, not indicted) because the jury doesn’t accept or like the law.  Hamblin was clearly guilty and, in fact, admitted the transgressions.

Why I think Hamblin deserves to be guilty is not to protect him and his insane coreligionists (and I’ll be some commenters will oppose the law because it prevents a form of natural selection against stupidity!), for they have the right to endanger themselves in the name of faith if they want. No, I want the law enforced because it protects the snakes: hapless reptiles who are not only captured, often kept in terrible condition (see below), and —the ultimate indignity—forced to bite Christians.
Seriously, though, keeping snakes in bad condition is a form of animal abuse, and that’s what happened in this case:

Since 1947, Tennessee law has banned venomous snakes during church services or public settings. The state Supreme Court upheld that ban in the 1970s.

Matt Cameron, a spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said its officers acted correctly in raiding Hamblin’s church.

Most of the snakes were in ill health when they were seized, said Cameron. More than half died since the raid, and the rest are being cared for at a Knoxville zoo.

As I’ve recounted in some of my earlier posts, Scripture is either wrong on this point, since several famous snake-handlers have died painful deaths, or those hapless victims didn’t have “proper belief.” Once again, every possible outcome is consistent with God.
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h/t: Tom

~

Tiktaalik had hind limbs!

January 14, 2014 • 9:46 am

by Greg Mayer

In a paper in press in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Neil Shubin, Ted Daeschler, and the late Farish Jenkins describe the pelvis and partial hind limb of Tiktaalik roseae, the lobe-finned fish from the Canadian high arctic that they discovered in 2004 and described in Nature in 2006. Tikataalik is a transitional form from fish to tetrapods, and presents such a suite of advanced (for a fish) features that Neil dubbed it the “fishapod”. The newly reported finds show that Tiktaalik had a very substantial pelvic girdle and limb, which must have had a significant role in locomotion.

Of course, it’s not a surprise that Tiktaalik had hind limbs– most vertebrates do– but  the nature of the hind limbs in this, the most tetrapod-like of fish, is of especial interest. It’s been known for a while that Neil et al. had found the hind limb, and their publication on it has been eagerly awaited. The most important find, a pelvis and part of the associated limb, was actually found on the original holotype specimen (the one from which the species was described) found in 2004; four other isolated pelvises were found in later years. Since the first publication, preparator Fred Mullison has been working to free all the bones from the encasing rock.

Comparison of the girdles of Tiktaalik to those of Eusthenopteron (a 'standard' lobe finned fish) and Acanthostega (one of the earliest known amphibians)
Comparison of the girdles of Tiktaalik to those of Eusthenopteron (a ‘standard’ lobe finned fish) and Acanthostega (one of the earliest known amphibians)

So, what have we found out? The pelvis is robust, with an ilium and pubis, and a large acetabulum for receiving what must have been a substantial femur. There’s no ischium (the third bone in a typical tetrapod pelvis). The Tiktaalik website has 3D scans of the pelvis which you can rotate to see the full morphology.

Tiktaalik pelvis from below: ilium on left, the rounded acetabulum for reception of the head of the femur, pubis on right. The pubis is directed laterally.
Tiktaalik pelvis from below: ilium on left, the rounded acetabulum for reception of the head of the femur, pubis on right. The pubis is directed medially.

Only a portion of the hind limb was preserved: the intermedium, two radials, and several bony fin rays (lepidotrichia). We can tell from the acetabulum though that the femur must have been robust.

Hind limb of Tiktaalik from Shubin et al. 2014. The thin rays are lepidotrichia; the upper rectangular bone is the intermedium, the lower pair are radials.
Hind limb of Tiktaalik from Shubin et al. 2014. The thin rays are lepidotrichia; the upper rectangular bone is the intermedium, the lower pair are radials.

Here’s how the team summarized their findings:

Although no femur was found, Tiktaalik‘s fin rays and several other bones suggest the hind fin was comparable in size and complexity to the front fin. The shape and size of the hip socket reveal that the fin was capable of a wide range of movements, from swimming to supporting weight and rotating more like a tetrapod limb. But the overall structure of the pelvis is still more fish-like. Whereas tetrapods have a pelvis made of three parts, Tiktaalik‘s pelvis is still made of one, like fish. …

Overall, the mix of fish and tetrapod characteristics show us that the structures and mechanisms necessary for the invasion of vertebrate life on land evolved in the water first. Not only that, but before this discovery, we thought the front fins held the key to how vertebrates began to walk on land. The “front wheel drive” theory that fish dragged themselves out of the water with strong front fins and puny hind fins no longer holds. It appears that an “all-wheel” or even a “rear-wheel drive” system is a more appropriate analogy as the hind fins were just as important and may have even been involved in a walking behavior first.

____________________________________________________________

Shubin, N.H., E.B. Daeschler and F.A. Jenkins, Jr. 2014. Pelvic girdle and fin of Tiktaalik roseae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in press. pdf

First two Images from the Tiktaalik website 2014 New Discovery page.

Why not donate organs?

January 14, 2014 • 9:11 am

I think most states in the U.S. now provide a place on your driver’s license to verify that you’d be willing to donate organs, corneas, etc. in the case of a fatal crash (or other cause of death). I routinely check that box, of course, as should everyone, for what better use for a dead body than to give life or sight to others?

Yet the percentage of people who elect for donation is surprisingly small. According to NBC News:

Only about 45 percent of adults in the U.S. — nearly 109 million people — are organ donors, a figure that donation and transplant experts say seems tragically low when the public’s attention is riveted on the lack of organs for a child such as Sarah.

“We have millions of people that are concerned or outraged about this particular situation, yet 55 percent don’t sign up to donate,” said David Fleming, the president and chief executive of Donate Life America, a transplant advocacy agency that tracks U.S. donors.

The proportion of adults signed up as organ donors varies surprisingly widely across the U.S., from Montana, where 82 percent of people older than 18 are designated donors, to New York, where 20 percent are signed up. In Vermont, the figure is only 5 percent.

People typically sign up for organ donation when they acquire or renew driver’s licenses, and state motor vehicles departments keep track of the records. But it’s also possible to register online any time, driver’s license or no.

A reader mentioned these issues the other day, and it got me wondering why someone wouldn’t do this?  Why is the percentage so small? The article suggests a combination of procrastination and denial of mortality:

The biggest barrier to registering is procrastination — tempered with a little denial, said Sharon Ross, a spokeswoman for the San Diego affiliate of Donate Life.

“I think we, as a nation, as a whole, don’t think about death or want to think about death,” she said. “Many of our deaths are unexpected and sudden and we just don’t take the time to sign up.”

Well, procrastination is hardly an excuse, since it involves simply checking a box when you renew your driver’s license.  Mortality may be a factor, but you can hardly deny that you’re going to die. Everyone who makes wills acknowledges that.

My theory, which is mine, is that this reluctance is based largely on a religious fear that if they take out an organ when you die, you’ll show up in heaven without a kidney or a liver! That same fear may make people opt not for cremation but for whole-body burial. After all, who wants to approach the Heavenly Gates as a cinder?  Sophisticated Theologians™ will tell us that this is fatuous, but they don’t know better than anyone else. A recurrent subject of theological argument is in what precise form do we show up in Heaven? Disembodied souls? Young adults? (And, if so, how do we recognize our grandparents?)

I may be wrong about this, but it’s just a thought.

Regardless, I hope that most of the readers here, and all of the atheists, will agreed to donate their organs when they die.

In my hotel room

January 14, 2014 • 1:07 am

Some reader suggested I look for the Book of Mormon in my hotel room, since Bill Marriott, the CEO of the hotel group, is an important Mormon. As his Wikipedia bio notes:

He is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). In an episode of 60 Minutes aired on April 7, 1996, Marriott was interviewed regarding his faith by Mike Wallace. The episode also included interviews with football star Steve Young and church leader Gordon B. Hinckley. In 1997 Marriott was called by the church to be an Area Authority Seventy and member of the Fifth Quorum of Seventy.[4] This was split in 2004 and Marriott joined the newly created Sixth Quorum of the Seventy, serving until his release on October 1, 2011.

Sure enough, I opened the drawer next to my bed and found both the Book of Mormon and the work it was copied from:

P1050335

Now if you open the Book of Mormon, you will find two sets of testimonies by witnesses who purported to have seen the famous Golden Plates conveyed by the Angel Moroni and translated by the charlatan Joseph Smith. This is the “Testimony of Three Witnesses” signed by Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, and published in the introduction to every edition of the Book of Mormon since the first one in 1830:

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, his brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shewn unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvellous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.

Direcctly below that is further attestation by witnesses: “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses“, who also saw the plates around 1829:

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith, Jun., the translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen. And we lie not, God bearing witness of it.

This was signed by Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer, Jr., John Whitmer,Hiram Page, Joseph Smith, Sr., Hyrum Smith, and Samuel Harrison Smith.

Now Christians defend the truthfulness of the Gospels because they were written beginning a few decades after Jesus’s death, and none of the writers had actually witnessed the events they reported. But here we have a case in which eleven people verified in writing that they had actually seen the plates on which Mormonism was founded.

So why isn’t Mormonism regarded as better founded, historically, than Christianity? Why isn’t it widely seen as the True Religion? Only because all this happened in recent times. Because know about the duplicity and the clearly man-made nature of this religion, most of us dismiss it as a human-devised cult. (This is also one of the reasons many dismiss Scientology.) But the same was surely true of Christianity—and all other religions. The farther we are from the inception of a religion, the more credibility it attains—up to a point.  We no longer adhere to the Greek gods or the bloodthirsty deities of the Aztecs.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 14, 2014 • 12:49 am
I suspect Hili is using a double entendre here, for “under me” could reply to her staff (of which I’m one), but also to the fact that she was lying atop me when I was reading theology last week.
I miss that narcissistic cat!!!
Hili: I’m sad.
A: Why?
Hili: Because nobody under me is reading about theology.
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In Polish:
Hili: Smutno mi.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Bo nikt pode mną nie czyta o teologii.

Last day in Poland

January 13, 2014 • 2:32 pm

I am now installed in what is a paradise for Professor Ceiling Cat. A Marriott! At the Warsaw airport! (I have never gotten over my youthful feeling that hotels are impossibly expensive luxuries, and I always enjoy the hell out of them, using all the little soaps and shampoos and watching cable t.v.) All I must do tomorrow is to walk across the street to the terminal at 10 a.m.

But I’m sad to leave Poland and my dear friends Andrzej, Malgorzata, and Hili-Cat, and my new friend Sarah. It was cold today, and there was even a bit of snow, so our activities were limited to working, nomming and a quick walk to the Vistula.  Hili accompanied us.

Walk

Can you find the cat in the photo below? The crypsis is remarkable. (Still, it’s easier than Matthew’s damn nightjars!)

Find the cat

Fitness, Hili’s nemesis, made an appearance this morning. A while back Fitness was lost for four days, and when he finally returned had undergone a personality transformation: he was friendly to human strangers and even got along with Hili. Sadly, Fitness has now reverted to his skittish self, so it was remarkable that Andrzej was able to pick him up:

Fitness

Finally, as I rode the train back to Warsaw, my leaden heart was lifted by a lovely sunset:

P1050332

My last meal in Poland? A cheese sandwich from the hotel store, a diet Coke, and a free apple from the front desk.

Farewell, Poland, and I hope to see you again before too long.

Cat confession contest

January 13, 2014 • 1:16 pm

I want to remind readers of the Cat Confession Contest, which is easy and fun to enter. One winner will receive an autographed copy of WEIT, emblazoned with a drawing of their own personal cat, as well as the chance to have their cat’s picture appear on this website for the delectation of thousands (I’ll post several runners-up, too).

To remind you what to do, here are three examples that I haven’t shown before (not from our readers):

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iRgiboR

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(Now that’s a funny-looking cat!)

Go here to see other examples of cat confessions, and send yours to me via email (easily obtained by Googling; if you don’t know it, ask in the comments readers will answer). All you must do is take a picture of your moggie along with a written “confession” of something bad it has done. Note: the “bad thing” must be true!

Remember, cats are not repentant, so the confession should not express contrition. On the contrary: cats are proud of their misdeeds.

Deadline: two weeks—Jan. 26 by 5 p.m. Chicago time. For the contest to be valid, there must be at least ten entries. I have only three.