Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainOK, I stole that title from Daedalus at Washingtonrox who reports on a court case to go before the Federal District Court in LA. A consortium of Christian schools is suing the University of California for refusing to credit some of their courses. This NY Times article contains excerpts from the disputed textbooks. This passage on slavery particularly caught my eye [...]
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Having been rather busy lately I haven't commented yet on Kansas' decision to legislate Intelligent Design into the science classroom. What is there really for a thinking person to say on this subject? I mean, other than "Nice job, morons." Besides, there are many people far more qualified to speak on this subject such as PZ Myers. However, I thought Scientific American Editor In Chief John Rennie pretty well summed up the issue. [...]
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UPDATED! See below!
Well, now that pesky heathen holiday is out of the way it's time to kick off the real holiday season with a good old fashioned round of conservative pundit whining. Always the traditionalist, Bill O'Reilly doesn't fail to disappoint. This time O'Reilly is working in a new twist to an old favorite combining whining about the evils of secularization with pimping George Bush's new tin soldier Samuel Alito. According to O'Reilly, "The Founding Fathers didn't want all mention of Christmas stricken from the public arena. That's what Alito will do. He's a traditionalist. He's going to rule that way."
Of course, O'Reilly isn't really the best authority on what the Founding Fathers would want. After all, as archy points out, in the early days of the New England colonies, Christmas was outlawed. Of course, that was those wacky Puritans, but Thomas Jefferson (a Founding Father that conservatives love to quote) was on record as opposing federal recognition of holidays. But the truth has never stopped the conservative punditry. Well, let me assure any of our readers out there that are concerned about the "War on Christmas".
Speaking as an actual card-carrying member of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy, your religious holidays don't concern us. We don't want to stop you from practicing your religion or celebrating it in public. But there's a good reason not to put a creche on municipal property. You see, there are a lot of religions out there and that nativity scene on the lawn of the county courthouse might annoy a Muslim or a Buddhist (do Buddhists get annoyed?). Worse, it might be seen as government officially sanctioning a particular religion. And that annoys everybody. Including us evil atheists.
Update Nov. 6 2005: I'm not really sure if this site is parody or not, but it would seem my little badly written, sleep deprived rant struck a chord. Operation Nativity in yesterday's "Infidel Roundup" writes:
This atheist illustrates the dangers of diversity: ... Again, you can't stop the citizens of this country from celebrating its official religion. The sects and foreign religions are fine, but they aren't the official religion of the good 'ol U.S. of A. Remember that!
Hmm... I'm thinking this has got to be parody. Official religion. Yeah, right. I wasn't aware the fundie nutcases had gotten the Constitution rewritten yet. In any case, does this mean I get bumped up on the Evil Atheist payscale?
