Randall Terry is back. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, he’s the founder of the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue which terrorized abortion/reproductive health clinics during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. As the following article from Americans United states, Terry is an “ardent theocrat, a foe of church-state separation and an all-around rotten guy.”

A Terry comment from 1993 encapsulates his “Christian” worldview.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you,” he said. “I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this county. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

And now he has brought his “Xian luv” to the 2008 Democratic convention:

According to news accounts, Terry and 12 others were arrested yesterday outside the Democratic Convention in Denver. His press release in advance of the event said he and other “Catholic and Evangelical Christians will peacefully ‘break the law’ to protest the slaughter of the innocent by abortion, and to call on fellow Christians to reject the Obama/Biden ‘Ticket of Death.’”

Pro-lifer activists like this asshat call on their fellow god botherers to protest abortion, but they never say what they will do for that child once they force the women to have these babies. What about the child after it’s born to a mother who cannot take care of it? What about the child who is born to an drug user? What about the child who would be born with fetal alcohol syndrome? What about the child who is born into some other dire circumstances because pro-lifers forced their mothers to have them? Few of these activists say what they will do for the child once it is born and no longer an infant (if it survives that long). We don’t see this kind of religious activism to call for help for the homeless, those who live in poverty, drug addicts, and others who live in desperate situations.

Relatives of mine are pro-life. They are adamant about their anti-abortion stance and believe that abortion is never an option. They will vote for the government to take away legalized abortions. Yet what do they do to help children who are born into poverty and poor environments? They moved to a beautiful and isolated island off the coast of Alaska where they believe their “God is blessing them” while they spew out their rules they wish everyone else to live by. They did not take their “work” to the inner cities and other areas where there is the greatest need.

For every religious fuckwit that bites the dust (as in Karen’s post below), others refuse to die even though most of American wants them to STFU: Nightmare On Theocracy Street: America Wants Randall Terry To Get Lost

In the following video, Terry sounds eerily like Scientologist whackadoo Tom Cruise

Randall Terry Gets Owned

Here is news in The Guardian concerning atheist UK foreign secretary David Miliband possibly becoming the next prime minister. It will take about 400 more years for the U.S. to get to this point, I am afraid.

In this climate of quarrels between religionists and secularists, there are very many reasons to hope for a non-believer at No 10

When Labour cabinet members were asked about their religious allegiances last December, following Tony Blair’s official conversion to Roman Catholicism, it turned out that more than half of them are not believers. The least equivocal about their atheism were the health secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary David Miliband.

The fact that Miliband is an atheist is a matter of special interest given the likelihood that he may one day, and perhaps soon, occupy No 10. In our present uncomfortable climate of quarrels between pushy religionists and resisting secularists - or attack-dog secularists and defensive religionists: which side you are on determines how you see it - there are many reasons why it would be a great advantage to everyone to have an atheist prime minister.

Atheist leaders are not going to think they are getting messages from Beyond telling them to go to war. They will not cloak themselves in supernaturalistic justifications, as Blair came perilously close to doing when interviewed about the decision to invade Iraq.

Atheist leaders will be sceptical about the claims of religious groups to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good, getting public funds, meriting special privileges and exemptions from laws, and having seats in the legislature and legal protection from criticism, satire and challenge.

Atheist leaders are going to be more sceptical about inculcating sectarian beliefs into small children ghettoised into publicly funded faith-based schools, risking social divisiveness and possible future conflict. They will be readier to learn Northern Ireland’s bleak lesson in this regard.

Atheist leaders will, by definition, be neutral between the different religious pressure groups in society, and will have no temptation not to be even-handed because of an allegiance to the outlook of just one of those groups.

*snip*

Despite appearances, the world is not seeing a resurgence of religion, only a big turning-up of the volume of religious voices. This is itself a response to increasing secularism among people tired of the disruptions, obstructions and conflicts religion so often causes. Public acknowledgement of atheism by a senior politician who might soon lead his country is just one indicator of the fact that the tide is actually running in the opposite direction: and that is a welcome and hopeful sign.

Maybe the “tide is running in the opposite direction” in the UK, but it certainly isn’t here in the U.S.

Ed note: To clarify–I did not post this to endorse Miliband as prime minister or his policies, I posted this to show that the UK is not afraid to elect an atheist and religion is not the centerpiece of politics there. We are centuries behind them in that regard.

I was reading about this over at PZ Myers’ blog about how some claim that similarities in evolutionary pathways indicates some sort of designer’s manipulation. Convergent evolution.

And here I will say it: there was a designer, there still is a designer, and the design is ongoing, a work in progress.

The designer that I speak of is the process of evolution. It has no face: no direction: no ‘grand purpose’ in mind. It just is, and it just does what it does and all the vocabulary and spin and sugar-coating and politics and rhetoric cannot alter that.

The creationist George McReady, spun it thusly:

For instance, we have the shark, the ichthyosaur (an extinct kind of fish-shaped reptile), and the dolphin (a true warmblooded mammal, and not a fish at all), all of which greatly resemble each other in external shape and general appearance. Each has the same long, sharp snout, the same powerful tail, the same general fishlike shape. And yet the first of these is a true fish, the second was just as true a reptile, while the third is a mammal, bringing forth its young alive and feeding them by milk, just as does a cow or a horse, though it lives in the sea.

Here the evolutionists have to say that this peculiar shape and general form has been evolved separately and independently in each of these three instances. Indeed, Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, declares that a very similar shape and form has been independently evolved “at least twenty-four times.”—”Encyc. Brit.,” Vol. XX, p. 578…

From this large group of facts we become convinced that these many similar or identical structures, which must have been evolved quite independently (if evolved at all), make too great a draft on our credulity. At least, these hundreds of examples of “parallel evolution” greatly weaken our confidence in homology, or similarity of parts and organs, as a proof of blood relationship.

Well, no, to be honest, it certainly doesn’t stretch my credulity: it’s a far leap from the premise ‘Look at all the similarities inherent among species’ (given that we share a large percentile of DNA with a banana) to ‘there’s a divine hand behind it all’. If anything, these items reinforce the concept of natural selection. Certain forms work better in the water: other forms work better on the land. We should be surprised to see marine species using flippers instead of four legs, when they swim? It would be more interesting to see a gilled mammal. A literal ’sea-cow’, that was gilled, grazed underwater, had four legs and horns, etc.

 So we have evolutionary relay, convergent evolution, and parallel evolution as constructs. No doubt some IDiot will use these as being contradictory to one another, when all three can be used as the situation fits.

As an aside, it amuses me to see how the hereafterians sputter in horror at the concept of a universe lacking a guiding hand. As if left to our own devices, we somehow become a psychopathic bunch of nerve endings unable to restrain our baser impulses.

Till the next post, then.

While our focus has been on the attempts of cretinists creationists here in the U.S., Answers in Genesis followers are on a mission to integrate their ID crap in public school curricula in Britain and France. It is not enough for them to teach their mythology in their churches and in their homes, and it’s not enough to work on fucking up their own country, they want to drag all people back to the dark ages with them.

These people still don’t have a clue or refuse to accept what scientific theory is. It does not mean “to guess” or to make shit up. For our fundie lurkers…once again:

From Wikipedia, In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. For the scientist, “theory” is not in any way an antonym of “fact”. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behavior are Newton’s theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and the general theory of relativity.

I found a rebuttal site to Answers in Genesis called NO Answers in Genesis. Creationists, please go there and READ, if you can. No god will strike you dead if you do.

Basically, the courts are saying that she is allowed to be a child.

Amazing how many ancient superstitious beliefs still persist in these modern times (Christianity included). It’s good to know, however, that once again reason has overruled superstition.

Nepal court in landmark ‘goddess’ rights ruling

KATHMANDU (AFP) - A Nepali tradition of locking a young virgin girl in a palace and worshipping her as a “living goddess” has been dealt a blow with the country’s Supreme Court ruling she has the right to go to school.

The court said there was no justification for the specially chosen pre-pubescent girl, known as the Kumari, to be subjected to a practice that dates back centuries.

The current Kumari is nine-year-old Preeti Shakya.

The ruling comes barely three months after Nepali lawmakers abolished the country’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy, who received annual blessings from the Kumari in a ceremony designed to underpin the legitimacy of the royals.

The court’s verdict was prompted by a complaint from local lawyers that keeping a young girl cooped up in an ornate but decrepit palace in Kathmandu’s medieval quarter was a violation of her rights.

“The Supreme Court came up with a verdict… asking the government to take action to protect the rights of the Kumari,” Supreme Court spokesman Hemanta Rawal told AFP.

“The court ruled there were no historic or religious documents that state the child should be denied the rights of education, movement etc. She should not be denied these things just because she is the Kumari.”

Furthermore, the “living goddess” concept is facing redundancy given that Nepal is now officially a secular republic run by ultra-leftist ex-rebel Maoists keen to do away with the country’s “feudal” practices.

And the usual retort by the believers no matter what religion they follow — their sky boss told them to do it:

The people in charge of looking after her said they took orders from the heavens — and not the Supreme Court.

Sound familiar? Of course our superstitious folks would say that they aren’t taking orders from the “true” imaginary being.

And then when she hits a certain age, they are done with her:

The Kumari is chosen as a three or four-year-old girl from a Buddhist caste, and remains in the position until she starts menstruating, when the process to choose a new goddess begins anew.

It’s not enough for the government to want to tap our phone lines to hear our conversations. Now they are working on a way to try to read our minds (disguised as good intentions to help soldiers, stroke victims, etc.) :

Guess what? Military funds mind-reading science

LOS ANGELES - Here’s a mind-bending idea: The U.S. military is paying scientists to study ways to read people’s thoughts. The hope is that the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals.

But the research also raises concerns that such mind-reading technology could be used to interrogate the enemy.

Or whoever they deem as a “potential threat” to use this on, I am sure.

Armed with a $4 million grant from the Army, scientists are studying brain signals to try to decipher what a person is thinking and to whom the person wants to direct the message.

A waste of our tax dollars? Or valuable research for the future?

The scientists use brain wave-reading technology known as electroencephalography, or EEG, which measures the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp.

It works like this: Volunteers wear an electrode cap and are asked to think of a word chosen by the researchers, who then analyze the brain activity.

In the future, scientists hope to develop thought-recognition software that would allow a computer to speak or type out a person’s thought.

“To have a person think in a free manner and then figure out what that is, we’re years away from that,” said lead researcher Michael D’Zmura, who heads UC Irvine’s cognitive sciences department.

I think it’s gonna be a long, long time and is a big waste of time and money.

says Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Church and State.

I don’t see what good it will do for the American people to again hear the candidates spout pious platitudes about their favorite Bible verses or how devout they are.

“Candidates should appeal to the voters based on their qualifications for office and their stands on the issues, not their religious beliefs,” Lynn said.

I agree with Lynn that we have heard enough about the religious views of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and let’s get on to the real issues. Looking back at the ” Rick Warren Bible drill” I say now that that is over, let’s get on with debating and discussing the things without the distraction of personal religious convictions. We’re a country of diverse people, not an evangelical congregation.

“This event continues the campaign spiral into religious matters. Americans want to hear the candidates’ views on important issues such as constitutional rights, public education, the Iraq War and the economy.”

The Sunday after the forum was held, Warren told his congregation:

“I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God,’ ” Warren said. “They’re saying, ‘I’m totally self-sufficient by [myself].’ And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It’s too big a job.”

So, no matter how intelligent, level-headed, fair, and moral an atheist is, he is saying that an atheist cannot do as good of a job because an atheist does not have an imaginary “co-pilot”. And no one disputed that.

And Warren left out the fact that President can’t do his job with just the help of his/her imaginary friend. The President has advisors, committees, military generals, and other experts who help him do his job. No sky daddy comes in and sits in at meetings and offers any advice. God is only involved when a president wants to use it as justification to invade a country, etc. If he says that God told him to do it, then the people cannot argue with that, right?

After Obama-McCain forum, Rick Warren sermon focuses on character

. . . because “someone did that 2,000 years ago ”

GOP Rep. To Environmentalists: Jesus Already Saved The Planet

We like to keep track of the, er, intriguing sayings of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the Christian Right champion from Minnesota. But this latest is really out there — Bachmann says we don’t need pesky environmentalists like Nancy Pelosi around, because Jesus already saved the planet!

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Wow.

Other recent Bachmannisms include the claim that there isn’t actually any wildlife in the areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where she wants more drilling, and the allegation that Democrats want high gas prices so as to force people to move into “inner cities” and “the urban core.”

Michele Bachmann Accuses Pelosi of “Global Warming Fanaticism”