Don McElroy is out! Texas has some small reprieve

NCSE is reporting that Don McElroy, the creationist dentist who's been heading the Texas Board of Education, has been stripped of his chairmanship by the Texas State Senate. His nonsense has been clogging the science standards for months. There are other creationists on the board though. One of them, Cynthia Dunbar, could replace McElroy. That would be kind of a non-change. But at least the "great state" of Texas has some reprieve. YEEHAW!!

So the Discovery Institute thinks it's...what?

Oh the Disco 'Tute. I think they should just forget it. They are a faith-based initiative. This is beyond words. The new write-up in New Scientist and their new launching pad from Faith and Evolution just shows how transparently Christian they are. Where's the lab Paul Nelson? I thought Expelled was defending something...I don't know...somewhat scientific? Please. Aren't they humiliated yet? Nope. Just some hokey music that suggests that we are doomed if we don't express our love for Jesus.

This is simply awful garbage. But the best part is that the Disco 'Tute is fighting Francis Collins, an evangelical who also accepts the bulk of evolution. So sorry Disco. ID is dead science.

Florida has state-subsidized home schools?

According to World Net Daily (lovingly called World Nut Daily by some) you can home school your child on the state's bill. That's right: you can simply redirect your tax dollars into a cyber school of your choice if you don't want your sons and daughters to learn the heathenous reality about evolution or that oh-so-miscreance inducing subject of comprehensive sex education.

One Susan Lockhart found herself complaining at the school day in and day out about her local public school's curriculum. So she took manners into her own hands, yanked her daughter, Kristin, from school, and started homeschooling her. Really, she's signed her up for a cyber school called the Florida Virtual School, which provides her with up to 95 courses grades 6-12 for her daughter to access. The best part for them seems to be that Kristin gets to be shielded from things her parents' find religiously offensive like evolution.

Susan says, "[FVS] make[s] everything available for the parents so they can read every word of the curriculum and every word of everything your child turns in. You are totally in control of everything. It is far better than regular school systems." Not only this, you can opt out of assignments you don't like at no penalty. So I guess that when Kristin gets to Biology class she will just skip over the evolution stuff (and their language on the website is about "microevolution and macroevolution" which might be code for some level of evolution denial). Yep. She did. She got to do a creationist assignment. How this passes muster in a science class, I don't know.

I have some pretty mixed feelings about this. Some of you might find it puzzling that I think that homeschooling or unschooling is a good idea under some conditions. Parents well-equipped with skills, knowledge, and wherewithal to create a free and open structure in which their child or children can learn better than those children can in a public school should go ahead and do it. If my wife and I can one day have the time and organizational prowess and the ability to work with some other like-minded parents, I would be more than willing to homeschool my son. I say this because I think that with an experientially rich environment that is structured by loving people, children and adults do better. But we should, at this point, have to pay for it ourselves as part of a tax-funded public school system that exists to ensure public well-being.

The Lockarts are escaping this so far as I can tell. They are using the public coffers to shield their child from public knowledge. That makes for a potential tragedy of the commons through free-riding. Why should Kristin get the money to do whatever she and her family want to do when other kids have to do what the state wants them to do? Or is Kristin really doing what the state wants kids to do? The vast majority of cases would seem to indicate that the state likes kids in state schools (where there has been plenty of evolution fighting by the way). But it's not clear to me, at this point, what the rationale is for the state to do this. It's lopsided in Kristin's favor in a small "tragedy of the commons" and suggests, to me, that Florida needs to rethink how it regulates these new schools.

Evolution has become part of the science education standards in Florida. Kristin and her family are opting out of that because of creationist ideas. That may be their right to do in Florida and it would seem to hold in light of religious freedom court cases. The state may be able to compel schooling, but it seems unable to compel all of its curricula on those who reject it because of conscience. As whacko as I think it is to deny evolution, it might well be within an individual family's rights to temporarily secede.

But to "send" them to a cyberschool? I'm not sure about this. This looks like vouchers gone bad and an easy way for parents to pilfer the public's money for their own religious purposes. It's a way to publicly fund private religion. That seems shady. I hope someone takes a look at this.

Such are the wonders of subjectivity: Cynic and Vampires.

I've just read this interview with Paul from Cynic and watched the videos contained therein and thought..."Hmmm. Cynic has never overtly dealt with Christianity so far as I know."

And so when I watched the anime piece at the end of this blogpost, I am struck by the way that the piece interacts with the song "Evolutionary Sleeper" (first video below) from the new album Traced In Air.



One of the brilliant aspects of art resides within its ability to provoke and evoke the incredibly subjective. The whole reason I went to music school and got a tattoo of Gustav Mahler was because I had such a visceral reaction to the opening movement of the finale from Mahler's First Symphony, the 'Titan.' From that point on, I was hooked. And surely "Evolutionary Sleeper" has within it a great deal of conflict between the known and the unknown - between the question of whether "Were you expected here?" and the answer, "I whispered in your ear." But none of it, at least from the song's point of view and the album's point of view, has to do with vampires, crosses, or the like.

In point of fact, I'd suspect that there is a tacit understanding of the untouchable in the song. That there is an "unknown guest" to name another song from the album who is most assuredly not an undead minion. I don't write this to mock the video makers but to say that I think that what this song hopes to convey is something that really kind of eschews the normal metal diatribes that might come from war, disease, or external tribulation. Like many a Cynic song, I think it likely that what we are being asked to do is to consider ourselves in our places at our times in relation to one another as simple. breathing, human biological organisms filled with our vast but limited consciousnesses that give way to vast but limited sleeping unconscsiousness.

All that said, the responsiveness to musical dynamics and textures in the following video is pretty interesting even if it has nothing to do with the song whatsoever.

Challenge to the Disco 'Tute: Find one gene that has been unambiguously designed

This is a great challenge to the ID folks. Let's see what happens.



My hypothesis: A lot of hand-waving, misdirection, excuses, goal-post moving, and complaining.

Seeing Cynic again! A world of feelings!

Last Tuesday my friend Gary and I went and saw the greatest prog metal band of all time, Cynic at Jaxx in Virginia. In short it was brilliant. The opening bands were pretty strong: a local death metal band called Exist and then a Virginia band, heavy but influenced by Arabic and moody ambience, named Brave. It was cool.

But Cynic played a huge set that included everything from Focus except for "Uroboric Forms" and "Sentiment" and everything from Traced In Air except for Nunc Fluens. In a brilliant piece of encore work, they asked us what we wanted to hear and I shouted out, "Eagle Nature!" They played it. Fantastico!

Best for me, I got to hang out with all of the band members during and after the show at the merchandise stand and then outside. Plus, I got two hugs from Paul Masvidal who I got the good fortune to interview (click here), extensively, earlier this year. It was really a culmination and continuation of some great experience and I have to say that it was a great experience as a musician and a fan.

Without further delay! The fan pic!

Psychic vampirism

I think Paranormal State might be one of the silliest shows in the world. And as a Penn Stater, I find it particularly odious that a bunch of Penn State students and graduates are running around pretending to be ghostbusters and demon hunters. I wondered after all of the talk of Belial and other goofy hocus pocus how it could get sillier. Well, the answer is in: Watch Michelle Belanger talk about being a "psychic vampire." It's thoroughly endarkening and silly.

But don't worry. She's a professional. She's in control. From her website:

Michelle's psychic inheritance manifested in a variety of ways, the most remarkable of which was psychic vampirism. Michelle identified and came to terms with this condition while still in her teens. Her pioneering work, The Psychic Vampire Codex (Weiser, 2004), details concepts and techniques that she learned through an intensive study of her vampiric experiences. All of Michelle's other works similarly benefit from her unique combination of personal experience, intellectual insight, and intensive research. A firm believer that psychic perceptions are something that anyone can cultivate, she teaches a variety of techniques based upon a fundamental perception of psychic energy.

Right. Let's see how well she does any of this under remotely controlled conditions. Somehow I doubt it'll happen.

But just to add one more little thing here. What kind of career do you have when your magnum opus is The Psychic Vampire Codex? Call me ungenerous: but that's absurd. And it reads like shoddy adolescent comic book horror poetry steeped in misunderstanding and feelings of isolation, two things I do not doubt that Ms. Belanger has felt acutely and seeks to rectify through living out a fantasy of psychic vampirism that is really very real to her but denied by our current culture. Here is a taste:

Eternal, we wander the aeons, moving to the rhythm of our own inner tides.

Freed from the most fundamental of cycles, we are nevertheless beings bound by cycles. Our heightened awareness of ourselves and the world around us forces us to acknowledge natural rhythms that others simply ignore.

As the day waxes and wanes, we can feel it, and we know that the true realm of magick is the night, for that is when we wax in power. As the moon grows gravid and slim, we feel it, and we know, too, that there are more complex rhythms of power tied to her phases. As the wheel of the year turns round, we feel the wild times, the apogees and nadirs of power.

This reads like a bad Emperor song or something. Queue "Thus Spake the Night Spirit" or "I am the Black Wizards" and take it all very seriously.

Maybe I am taking cheap potshots here at someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm not sure though that there is some genuine justification out there for someone pawning utter fantasies as realities to one another. I can hear me some Emperor and go for the entertainment or play me some games of Dungeons and Dragons and accept the fantasy for what it is. But this kind of absurdity is a kind of pernicious charlatanism that feeds on weak and disaffected people with the promise of some higher truth that doesn't exist.

Teacher prohibited from calling creationism "superstitious nonsense" in school

This is a very strange case. The NCSE reports:

A teacher's description of creationism as "superstitious nonsense" was ruled to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by a federal judge in a decision in C. F. et al. v. Capistrano Unified School District et al., issued on May 1, 2009. James Corbett, a twenty-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, California, was accused by a student, Chad Farnan, of "repeatedly promoting hostility toward Christians in class and advocating 'irreligion over religion' in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause," according to the Orange County Register (May 1, 2009). "Farnan's lawsuit had cited more than 20 inflammatory statements attributed to Corbett, including 'Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies — that's interfering with God's work' and 'When you pray for divine intervention, you're hoping that the spaghetti monster will help you get what you want.'"

How strange that in the statements listed here that it's the creationism remark that the judge went after. I would think that the remarks to go after would be those that directly insult both the divine being and the people practicing it. Calling God a spaghetti monster and accusing the practitioner of being selfish is a little nastier to my mind than calling a scientifically empty idea "superstitious nonsense." In the spirit of ecumenicism, Corbett probably should have kept his mouth shut or, at most, used some more diplomatic language.

But I'm still confused as to why the judge focused on that one. Any ideas?

"The language of feelings" - An interview with Paul Masvidal of Cynic

As you probably know, my favorite band is Cynic. For the last 15 years they have had a lasting impact on my consciousness in a way that I can scarcely describe. They are a band of beauty, heaviness, patience, and deeply intense introspection – a band of such artistic grace that they exist as a total anomaly. In my personal trek through 7 years of music school and more hours in the music library than any other student I knew, I came upon few composers and players who instilled in me a feeling of thrill and calm. As they quote Emerson's "Maia" - a poem about the "dual scales of Maya/Maia and man's "thirst to be deceived" by innumerable misapprehensions and thoughts - they instilled in me quite the dual experience: the experiences of visceral driving energy and also placid surrendered serenity.

Last summer I wrote about them in a celebratory post. In February I saw them in Maryland (posted here) on their tour with Meshuggah to promote their album Traced In Air and was simply elated. Next Tuesday I will see them in Virginia at Jaxx where they will be headlining (post pending). From the rumors floating around we are led to believe that they might play everything.

All that said, the founder, lead guitar player, and vocalist, Paul Masvidal (pictured at right courtesy of cyniconline.com), agreed to an interview. I hope you enjoy the exchange.

The questions are decidedly not standard metal faire. Generally, music journalists have focused on Cynic's history as part of the Florida death metal scene, as a child of Chuck Schuldiner's band Death, and/or as an oddity because of their elaborate use of incredible equipment. All of that has been instructive and provided us all with a sense how to place Cynic within metal. That was not my purpose.

I think that what you'll find in the following interview is Paul's deep sense of intrinsic connectedness to the process of music and to a person who just experiences his own becoming. Intellect is subsumed by experience and experience is the wellspring of beauty, anger, introspection and actually more experience. Read on as we try "disassembl[e] the captain's chair."

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Peter Buckland: In an interview about 16 years ago you said something to the effect of, “I can’t write anything angry anymore.” What happened between say Death’s Human and Cynic’s Focus that switched that? There is a shift there. I think I hear some of that beauty in [Death's] “Cosmic Sea” to what came later. But can you talk about that transition more?

Paul Masvidal: Just prior to the Human period I began a regular meditation practice. For me the change was subtle, but I found at my core beyond the externals of "life stuff" a real stillness. When life took on a more gentle approach, the me-against-the-world feelings were dissipated and anger become something more hidden and subtle yet still very much there. I can tune into certain forms of anger now, but the charge is different. The energy of anger is similar to depression and can be very complex and juicy which provides for some interesting results as an artist. I'm not exactly sure what caused the shift other than the forced patience one acquires when meditating.

I have to sit and be with my mind, and that kind of training over time changes the way we think or don't think. I'm also an avid reader and have always been interested in integrating new psychological tools as a thinking being, so all these factors seem to be interacting with each other.

PB: So when you got to Cynic’s Focus, there was a transformation. Why all of the vocal styles? The album’s opening on “Veil of Maya” was like a newly bloomed tree in metal. Did you have expectations about that?

PM: Beyond the esoteric aspect of the creative process, there's a practical approach to writing that rides on instinct and gut level decision making. I just know when an idea has arrived and I don't know where that understanding comes from other than previous study and practice. The vocal mixes came from the same logic in which we would approach a song arrangement. I like different colors and sometimes particular lyrics or sonic environments call for particular approaches that support the environment better. It's all about communication and finding the most effective way of translating an idea, and trying to not have expectations.

The trick for me is to stay open to possibility and to just allow without forcing my hand. Eventually the music uncovers itself. I just need to keep showing up for it. Often songs feel like they were already written or familiar and I'm just re-discovering it's presence in this realm. The active flow of 'the work' is way more interesting to me than being result-oriented. I guess the only result I'm really interested in is capturing and executing a creative idea properly.

PB: Specifically, why the whispering? Why the female vocals?

PM: Again, the why's behind creative decisions are not really for me to answer. I just trust that it somehow communicates better because of how it feels. We're talking about the language of feelings and it's hard to articulate or intellectualize this kind of thing. I could say, whispers work because they are subtle and mysterious sounding, and female vocals (depending on the voice) can bring a feminine strength to the song that perhaps was needed. Maybe the song was calling for an androgynous balance or energy to it.

These are logical answers to an illogical process. The music informs me and I just try and take orders. I don't really think I have much to do with the decisions here as a person but more as a vehicle translating information properly, if that makes sense.

PB: How do the lyrics and musical textures, rhythms, harmonies interact with the lyrics? I hear a lot of interplay. “Her gay pictures never fail, crowd each other veil on veil.” Are the shifts veils upon veils?

PM: You're picking up on an extremely subtle level of listening which I'm pleased to hear. The words are always interacting with the sound and playing off each other. Some songs explore this idea in a more obvious manner. Most of the time, I find that there's a collective language at play between harmony, melody, rhythm and words. Often that collective doesn't become clear to me till later.

I often don't understand what the song is really doing until long after it's been written. That's why it seems like something beyond me. Although we're calculating every minute detail, we're also completely surrendering to the innate intelligence of the song itself and I'm doing my best to remember that.

PB: As a listener I noticed a lot of continuity between Focus and Traced In Air and I hope I can ask you about those.

First, if you look at the shape and flow of the cover art, there is a nice relationship. Is that purposeful?

PM: Yes, the choice has purpose. When Sean and I saw the new album cover by Venosa, we immediately knew it was right. At the time, Focus was not in our language or a conscious reference, but the more I thought about it, I began to see the relationship. In many ways the Traced cover is an evolution of the Focus cover in terms of the angel/being itself.

PB: I’ve noticed that the Focus artwork seems like the primordial form, the unfocused form, of what evolved into the cover of Traced In Air. I've read that about the "alien" and the "Shiva." How did that work out and how was it important?

PM: I see it now as a yin/yang kind of balance. We made a full circle with this record in many ways and found a wholeness by completing the circle. The raw angelic form of Focus has taken flight, by essentially emerging from that primordial ooze and forming a more human like 'body' of light. The archetypal shape of the covers are working together in a dependent symbiotic fashion. With these images we access not only our primordial ancestry, deeply embedded in our cells and DNA, but also a vast network of energy is available to us in interaction with the Cosmos. Venosa is a tremendous conduit artist working in the transformational field and we're grateful to be working with him again.

PB: Second, there seemed to be a very self-conscious occupation with virtuosity on Focus that isn’t there now. There is more of a feeling of the new album just sort of being what it is. Can you talk about that?

PM: I think it's just the result of maturity as a songwriter. We're more interested in restraint and saying less with more. In some ways Traced In Air is more complex than Focus because of that approach, it's just deceptive and not as obvious. Also confidence in an actualized voice comes into play with the music now versus finding it.

We discovered Focus as it happened. The new album did that too but we approached it with a sense of having an established identity which gives it more 'is'-ness or 'that'-ness. Traced In Air sounds more natural and consistent in that sense because all the songs have a similar intention at their root.

PB: Cynic and Portal use some chanting. Is that informed by spiritual practice? If so, how?

PM: Sure. I've gone through different chanting periods in my practice, and often it will make it's way into a song if it's an active time. My older brother is well-versed in Sanskrit mantra and I occasionally get some insights from him. I also have a friend who's a Vedic astrologer and he often tips me on different mantras and chants that may be of interest depending on what's going on in my life.

PB: In another interview, you said that in a way you have traveled a circle to where you are, to a new place in the universe. The album seems to begin with an invocation, like an invitation to “this space.” So what is this space?

PM: In a general sense, it's whatever you need that space to be as the listener. I'm always interested in spaciousness and how to open myself up to it in my own life. The album is a journey into that place where we can simply breathe and let that be enough. We forget in this day and age that simply breathing is quite a task. I mean in terms of conscious breathing versus unconscious - training our minds and not having it train us.

I recently read somewhere this fabulous quote, it said "Don't just do something. Sit there!" I really connect with that sort of discipline. Where the externals are no longer consuming us and we are able to just be with what is instead of constantly trying to fill the empty space of our lives. We can just allow life to unfold and engage without manipulating and controlling life because we're afraid of the space.

I learned about the invocation aspect of creating space through a good friend of mine who's a shaman and a healer. I've been in ceremony with him and have begun to understand the power of creating a real space or energetic environment. I get to pierce the veil of my current version of reality and see life from what could be perhaps the most naked, raw place in the world.

Basically it's like a mini-death experience that clobbers you over the head in the form of an awakening. It's terrifying and incredibly beautiful at the same time.

PB: The concept of fluidity, of the river and waves, seems important to you. What is it? Why is it there?

PM: I grew up on the water and have always connected with the ocean and water element. I love the images associated with it and how it's often a metaphor for us as spiritual beings having a human experience. We often forget that we're all part of the same ocean and the oneness and non-dual vastness of the cosmic ocean is essentially where we all come from. There's a quantum scientific component to these words. Water is such a critical aspect of creation and matter in general, that it speaks to me in terms of all life. I've also received lot's of practical advice by simply observing a small river or creek. Water is the essence of life itself. I like the idea of befriending the water within and without as one big piece of connective tissue.

PB: “Space for This” seems similar to “Uroboric Forms.” But it’s simpler. It has a more penitential quality. What I mean is that it seems like you are and the musical technique are less in the way, not eating themselves up as much I guess. More mature maybe? Trying to be the space for expression. I don’t know. I guess I am just curious. Will you talk about that?

PM: I guess we've been talking about this since the beginning of the interview. It's about allowing the work to speak for itself and disengaging the person from it. Although the songs can be extremely personal, they also transcend the form. It's not about the teacher, but about the teaching. That's basically how I'd like Cynic's music to be heard. We are just here to communicate information through the medium of music.

PB: The last question and the last song brings up space, another important motif for Cynic. Why space? I think of “Cosmos” too from the Portal demo. Why space, infinity and so on?

PM: The connection to these concepts is more innate and instinct based than anything else. We gravitate towards vastness, space and infinity because they feel familiar and the music explores that energy as ultimate truth.

PB: The other motifs that I find coming up. Why consciousness? Why sleep? Why circles? I know that I’m going after these little particulars, but I guess I wonder how the things merge and intertwine in the course of practice and doing in such a way that Cynic is born. Not that Cynic is just some sum of some parts, but that there seems to be an undercurrent to it all that I long to understand knowing that I might never. Why these motifs?

PM: Consciousness has always been a huge field of interest for me since I got turned onto the work of Ken Wilber. He's like the Einstein of consciousness research. Sleep is intriguing as a process and I'm curious about the nature of sleep and how we can inhabit that resting space consciously. Circles are a perfect form and a universal timeless symbol that has always resonated with me. Again, it's what feels most comfortable in relation to Cynic's sound and color which in many ways is a direct reflection of my own life.

PB: Live, I was intrigued by the spoken word pieces? May I see them? The notion that we do violence to one another through insisting on being right really struck me in part because of where I heard it. Metal is such an insistently anti-authoritarian thing that has its own rightness I think. What is your perception of how people hear that? Does it matter?

PM: It doesn't matter so much as the audience can just participate in the inquiry with us. We're all in the same boat and a live gig for us is exposing and vulnerable for everyone, yet it can be a safe environment too where people get to purge and leave their regular life for a moment and enter a new space. I took these clips from the teacher Eckhart Tolle's, Power Of Now (see here for video).

PB: The other spoken word piece had to do with the mind not being the self. That seemed to sum up much of Cynic. Is there a guiding wisdom to which you hope to lead listeners?

PM: I like the idea of Cynic acting as a messenger for transformational media. Ultimately we're not here to preach or convince anyone. Everyone has their own direct experience that will give them the opportunity to explore who they are. We're just creating an environment in which one gets to potentially see something new or familiar.

PB: I am an evolution nut: big into understanding the incredible processes that have brought about life on Earth, including human beings. I guess you could say that I find joy in the fact that I am related to every other living and non-living thing. What a beautiful accident that we are a conscious piece of the universe. So when I read and listen to “Evolutionary Sleeper” I wonder about it. Why evolution? Why sleep? Why together? What emerges?

PM: Evolutionary sleeper has many layers to it. Simply put, the song explores a self-dialogue with the idea of spiritual / emotional growth where we least expect. The idea of maintaining an attitude of curiosity to our pain or suffering instead of allowing our minds to turn it into something even more difficult. It's not about ignoring or hardening when life's difficult, it's actually the opposite. We lean into the discomfort and allow ourselves to soften as a result. We go gentle and surrender to life. In some ways we have to transcend (or go beyond) mind in order to really see clearly: what emerges is truth itself.

PB: Traced In Air ends with a recourse to the beginning. Does that mean something? Is that the circle? Is it gone?

PM: You got it. Just when the circle's drawn, just then the circle's gone. The contradiction is that we have to make a complete circle in order for us to realize it must disappear. There are no boundaries and that infinite, timeless space is where Cynic's music attempts to reside.

PB: Thank you so much Paul.

PM: Thank you my brother.

PB: From the Tao te Ching 43:

The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world

That which has no substance
enters where there is no space

This shows the value of non-action
Teaching without words
performing without actions:
that is the Master's way.

Peace.

PM: Thanks for the interview Peter. I love the Tao Te Ching. May you find peace in the breath wherever you are.

Silliest concert ever

Check out this bangin' line up. Soul Demise running with Beet, Maggot Shoes, Inhumanity, and Death Butcher. How do you butcher death? Are beets a part of the New Wave of European Vegetarian Metal? But by far the best has to be Maggot Shoes. Squish squish. I think all we need to add is a little Dying Fetus and Anal Cunt and we'd really grind it home.

Historical fictions in Congress: Stop America's Spiritual Heritage Week

The Secular Coalition of America has sent out an alert that Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Virginia), the Founder and Chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, and twenty-four other members of the House of Representatives, have co-sponsored a pleasant piece of historical revisionism - a resolution to “affirm the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and express support for designation of the first week in May as America's Spiritual Heritage Week for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith.”

I think it's pretty obvious that this is just more sectarian Christian pandering to American exceptionalism - a way to drape the cross with the flag and have that symbol drip with both the blood of Jesus and fallen soldiers. We should recognize that the only mention of any religion in the Constitution besides the "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses in the First Amendment and that the formal founding of our country omits religious tests for office and that prayer plays no formal role in the governance of our country. Of course the Congressional Prayer Caucus would have us all supplicate before their allegedly one true God and pray a la 2 Chronicles 7:14: "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

First of all, I am not one of God's people. I am not called by his name. I will not pray and seek his face. I am not wicked and do not need his forgiveness for my sins. Whatever healing our land needs - the healing of its soil, of its rapacious economy, and the healing of its widespread ignorance from fundamentalist religious lunacy - will come about by the work of informed and conscientious people working together for the good of themselves and their communities. It will not come from servility and obeisance to mythical sky gods.

There is no interest in some "rich spiritual tradition." Forbes no doubt wants to rewrite history by effacing the robust Enlightenment religious dialogue during American foundational governance. Jefferson eschewed "monkish ignorance" that led to his compiling a Bible from which he ripped the supernatural (at right).

This was a place and time when Washington left church for lack of belief in what was then a traditional American Christianity.

Thomas Paine, author of The Age of Reason and Common Sense, who was quite humanist in his view, writing,

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Like Petrarch, it would seem that Paine and many of the Enlightenment founding fathers (I really hate calling them that as if they are themselves deities) believed that "man is the measure of all things." Institutions of religion to which Forbes would have us bow by enmeshing churches and state are mere creations of society, its desires, and humanity's fantasies. Religion is man worshiping himself.

And we have some nice history on our side. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary (at left) just comes right out and says, "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." It was ratified by Congress on June 7, 1797 and signed by John Adams on June 10. End of story. If precedent is something we hold to in this country and we enjoy the flexibility and toleration of religion and non-religion then we ought to keep our government out of the religion business.

This measure needs to die.

So help out and ask your congressperson to flush it down the congressional toilet. Go here to send your representative a letter.

Sometimes...this is tiring

Francis Collins has come out to assert how science points to God. Again. And wait...again he has done this. And why?

According to the above link, "He began questioning his atheism during medical school, when he witnessed patients who were near death but who were deeply comforted by their religious faith." That's all well and good and, honestly, very touching. Sadly...really sadly...it does not mean it is true. It has no validity behind it besides the human desire to wish that it were so. And wishes, as much as we love them and hope for them and desire and pine, are not extrinsic to ourselves unless they are made. And God is not extrinsic to our hopes and desires and wishes. S/he and it or they (whether they are a god or gods) are the part of human interaction that mean what they mean because they are a part of us and not because we are a part of them. I ought to explain that.

If you follow Emile Durkheim, Russell, or (less gracefully) Hitchens, and the secularists that come after them you might come to see that religion is humanity worshiping itself. We create the superbeings outside of ourselves that dictate the good, the bad, and the ugly so to speak. In our acts of worship - whether those are for the best parts of ourselves contained in the Golden Rule or some of the sutras or the worst parts of us as in the genocidal portions of Genesis or the Q'uran - we worship conglomerated selves. We make a new identity and magnify it through our shamans, wizards, priests, imams, and pastors. In the acts of whatever apostles and the practice of our orthodoxy and orthopraxy we divine humans. That is all.

Francis Collins, for all of his badgering about the good of Jesus, has just endorsed a version of himself and his patients built on hopes but that pretends to scientific legitimacy. He asserts:

• There is something instead of nothing.

• The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, which make simple and beautiful laws.

• The Big Bang: out of nothingness, the universe came into being. That cries out for explanation, since we have not observed nature to create itself . . . it causes us to postulate a creator, and the creator must be outside of time or you haven't solved the problem.

• The precise tuning of the physical constants in the universe. If gravity was a little weaker, things would all start flying a part. You can see a creator in these constants.

The fact that there is something is no indicator of God. It is an indicator of something in the midst of not-something. I'm not sure what the math business has to do with anything other than a "Look! I can talk about math!" statement. The next point about the Big Bang just goes back to point #1 which is just another way of saying that because I'm something I have to think that God exists. The final point about the physical constraints of the universe is more wish-thinking about the state of the universe. Just because you can't conceive of a plan for the fine tuning of our solar system and universe doesn't mean there has to be one. That's called an argument from personal incredulity or from ignorance and it's...well...just another version of #1.

Collins was a great scientific bureaucrat. He's a lousy philosopher.

Flordida Anti-Evolution Bill Dies

The Florida legislature's Senate Bill 2396 died without ever coming to the floor. As the NCSE reports, it was a descendant of a previous piece of anti-evolutionism that has become all too common: bills that allegedly support "critical analysis" all provided by religiously motivated Christian creationist groups, so-called "pro-family" groups, and their "think tanks" like the Discovery Institute. Even this bill's sponsor, Sen. Stephen Wise, came out and told us, "If you're going to teach evolution, then you have to teach the other side so you can have critical thinking."

The problem here, is that there is no "other side" in biology on this matter. It just isn't there. For all of the critical analysis that these religiously-motivated legislators try to put into science education, the moment we turn critical analysis on their bills, the bills just fall apart. If only the political process could be as robust as evolution maybe these people would learn a thing or two and stop trying to reconstruct science without doing any of the legwork themselves or through agencies that they fund.

So this sham has passed into the night for now. But don't expect Florida to just roll over. After last year's shenanigans with Rhonda Storms and the fights over science standards, it might well be back in next year's legislative sessions.