Religion

Not on My Car and Hopefully Not on Yours

This entry was posted in bush Religion US Politics on by

Mithras spoiled my night. No, whoever came up with this spoiled my night.
NB: I do not object at all to christians putting the fish symbol where ever it pleases them; I would have preferred that the folks who embedded Darwin’s name into the fish symbol had chosen some other creature; this, though, is disrespectful of just about everything; it is, well, unAmerican.
Oh, also check out these posts and their comment threads. Warning: language and humor may be offensive to some.

Catching up on Genetic Dispositions

This entry was posted in Biology Politics Psychology Religion on by

Well, by mistake I decided to read Kristoff’s column from yesterday:

Instead, modern science is turning up a possible reason why the religious right is flourishing and secular liberals aren’t: instinct. It turns out that our DNA may predispose humans toward religious faith.
Via previous education I knew just where to look for the antidote to this stuff and Myers was P.Z. on the spot:
It�s nothing but modern molecular preformationism. Palmistry for the genome. We�ve been fighting against this simplistic notion of the whole of the organism prefigured in a plan or in toto in the embryo since Socrates, and it keeps coming back. We�ve moved from imagining a little homunculus lurking in the sperm to one hiding in the genome. It�s just not there. You can�t point to a spot on a chromosome and say, �there�s the little guy�s finger!�, nor can you point to a spot and say, �there�s his fondness for football!�.
Kristof, for instance, points to a particular gene as the source of piety. Piffle. Here�s his shining locus of sacredness, VMAT2:
It won’t hurt you to read the rest of the post yourself…
Over at Crooked Timber John Quiggen provides additional curative resources by working through some statistical, logical, and definitional failings in Kristoff’s piece and more generally with pop evolutionary psychology.
As usual the comment threads to both posts provided plenty of stimuli for both my chuckle gene and my thinking gene.

Oxymoron?

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Just where would someone get a PHD that would generate this set of conflicting qualifications?

Geology:Ph.D. required. Teaching Introductory Geology, Paleontology, and History of Life. Compatibility with a young-earth creationist position required.
Since the course content would be empty perhaps they should just use the same folks that teach this class:
THEO 250 – Fundamental Theological Issues (3 hours)
A study of the major theological questions that arise in the defense of biblical inerrancy, scriptural separation, creationism, and dispensationalism. It also deals with such contemporary issues as the charismatic movement, feminism, situation ethics, and other vital concerns to the fundamentalist in today�s world. (Prerequisites: THEO 201 and THEO 202)
Via Pharyngula.