Prop 8 is Delayed. Again.

The Advocate reported today that the supreme court case concerning Proposition 8, the bill passed in the California 2008 election making same-sex marriage illegal, is now delayed because of an appeal to 'standing'.  Ironically, this delay is actually being caused by gay rights advocates.  Prop 8 had been overturned earlier in the year (thankfully) by Justice Vaughn R. Walker.  The decision was appealed, but not by the state of California, the governor, or the attorney general.  Now the legal battle will be fought to determine whether general voters of California (supporters of Prop 8) actually have the right to appeal.


History says that voters do not have the right to appeal.  According to the Advocate:

Last month a three-judge panel for the ninth circuit asked the California Supreme Court whether Prop. 8 supporters who have defended the ballot initiative in the federal case Perry v. Schwarzenegger "possess either a particularized interest in the initiative's validity or the authority to assert the State's interest in the initiative's validity ... when the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so."

Fortunately the process is being expedited, but don't expect a decision on this matter any time soon.  It seems that there is light on the horizon for the Prop 8 opponents - with a little more time, gay and lesbian couples will no longer be formally discriminating against by the government.  Better late than never.


In other news, the Hawai'i legislature approved civil unions today for same-sex couples, and the Governor plans to sign the bill.  This brings the tally up to 10 states that offer domestic partnership and 5 states plus Washington DC that allow same-sex marriage.  It's a long road, but we'll get there eventually. 

Empty the Clip

Tea Party Jesus is keeping politician comments in perspective.  Alabama Senator Scott Beason recently said this about the topic of illegal immigration:

Really?  Empty the clip?  A gun reference that suggests firing all ammunition at immigrants until the weapon is empty?  How can this person be serious? Such bigoted comments should be exposed, and voters in Alabama should vote for "the other guy" in the next election.

If you're not familiar with the work over at TPJ, the author takes quotes from religious conservatives (usually Christian) and puts them in the mouth of Jesus - because conservatives think they're following Jesus' way of life, TPJ switches the character speaking the words and let's the reader decide if it's something Jesus would do.  It doesn't take twelve years of Sunday school to know that Jesus would never say "Empty the clip, and do what has to be done."

Free Will(y)

Thank goodness for Mr. Deity!  I've now found the perfect response to show the next baptist or evangelical that explains to me that the reason an omniscient and omnipotent god can allow evil is because of free will.  What a terrible reason!  In other words, a god would be choosing evil and suffering so we can have free will?  Doesn't sound like a trade off that a merciful and compassionate god who wants us to be with him/her one day would do.  Let's see how Mr. Deity gets through this:

Episode 21 is up!

Hey!  We've just uploaded our 21st episode of Pascal's Bettors - the best way to be happy without god!  Take a listen and join in the conversation and fun.

Finally a Good Trade-off for Allergies

There's a cool new study out showing an inverse correlation between the intensity of your allergies and the susceptibility of getting gliomas, a common type of brain and spinal cancer.  Although it's just a correlation, the study supports other data suggesting that the more allergies you have the less likely you are to get certain types of cancer.  It's still uncertain as to why this might be the case, but one likely hypothesis is that allergies indicate an overactive immune system.  Cancers result only when your body fails to kill the rogue cells before they get out of control - if people with allergies have overactive immune systems, perhaps their bodies just make it naturally harder for cancer cells to escape and survive immune stimulation.  Perhaps further research will confirm or refute this hypothesis, and inform us of more handy tools we could make to block cancer formation.

Until then, take a look at this MRI image of a glioma taken from the Mayfield Clinic website:

Hymns for Science

I myself (an ardent scientist and atheist) am unashamed to admit that I'm a huge fan of sacred music - especially pieces by Mozart and Rachmaninoff.  Unfortunately, as it's been discussed before in the science and atheism blogosphere, there are no good science or atheism hymns like religious folk have.  Although Steve Martin has actually performed a song about how "atheists don't have no songs", there really isn't anything all that enjoyable (or singable) that actually resembles something like a hymn you would find at your local church for science/godless enthusiasts like me.

Until now.

I give you, Evolution Made Us All, by Ben Hillman:


Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Thou Shalt Kill?

Many Christians, especially evangelicals, believe that evil things happen in the world because of Satan, not because of God.  This is a typical response to the question "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?"  The other popular response is "You can't know God's plan", implying that even though you *think* whatever happened was bad/evil, in the bigger scheme of things it was probably good (because God did it).  Of course, the implication is that God is the source of all things good, and Satan is the source of all things evil - it's a bit of a tautology, and it's very frustrating to hear these excuses in conversation because it seems that the individuals are just imagining beings into existence (Satan) or claiming your ignorance to account for phenomena that they don't want associated with their God (but should be associated because they demand an all-knowing, all-powerful god).

Well here's something else Christians may have trouble explaining - a simple graph depicting the number of murders that occur in the Bible committed by either God or Satan:

According to the source here (the Bible), God killed 2,391,421 people, but Satan only killed 10.  Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic - this indicates a level of killing by God that is FIVE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE ABOVE what Satan did.  In other words, God killed people 239,142.1 times MORE than Satan did.  I thought that the commandment was "Thou Shalt Not Kill"?  I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.

Information originally shared from a StumbleUpon post.
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UPDATE: For clarification, the SumbleUpon post was referred to me by the noble Greg Barnes, otherwise known as Greggles.

Does "Reason" Dress Dirty or Something?

One of the most frustrating aspects of religion is that it commonly claims truth through personal revelation.  For example, reading through the scriptures, god will "speak" to someone and they will "understand" something that they did not before.  It's interesting though ... I typically read non-sacred books and end up understanding things better too ... but not because a god spoke to me.  I rely on critical thinking processes and reason to compare and contrast ideas, evaluating the benefits and the disadvantages, the truths and the mis-perceptions of each idea.  Religious folk tend to frown on critical thinking in general and attribute any gain in knowledge to a god that they can't see, touch, hear, taste, or smell - to them, Reason is just the driving force behind questions like "Mommy, how did Methuselah live to be over 700 years old before antibiotics were discovered?" or "Daddy, if God's creation is perfect, then why did he/she create the Ebola virus, which kills you after uncontrollable vomiting and bloody diarrhea?"

Reason has long been the bane of the theologian's existence - constantly prodding; questioning; forcing religious leaders to re-think their magical explanations because, as it turns out, there's a natural force that seems to be lurking behind anything at which we turn our microscopes or telescopes.  Although it can sometimes seem that the religious kooks that *you* have to deal with every day are the most zeus-awful ignoramuses that ever existed, take solace in knowing that ignorant and inflammatory religious figures are nothing new - religion has been practicing their aversion to critical thinking for quite sometime.  In fact, one of the most well-known religious leaders, the one who provided the intellectual and emotional vigor for splitting off from the Catholic faith and creating what we know today as Protestantism, spewed some of the most ignorant and vile stupidness long before we had Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.  I give you the infamous words of Martin Luther, from Works, the Erlanger Edition v. 16, p142-148:

Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom… Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.

Doesn't that just make you proud to be a protestant?!  And know that this sort of misguided thinking is not out of an unbiased evaluation of the concept of critical thinking or reason.  Martin Luther had a clear agenda:

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Aren't you happy that we don't live in the early 1500s, with Martin Luther as a King? Imagine if he were alive today ... he would burn us all at the stake because of our acceptance of the internet, vaccines, and goodness knows the gays!

Obama *is* Jesus

It's amazing how hypocritical many religious conservatives are, especially the evangelical Christian variety.  In fact, shouldn't the phrase "conservative Christian" be an oxymoron?  In what way would Jesus have been a conservative?  I mean, really.  The number of Christians who go to church and hear/read about the Beattitudes in the book Matthew are oftentimes the ones who go out and vote to disenfranchise groups of underprivileged people - is that really what Jesus would do?  The website Tea Party Jesus has done a fantastic job at revealing the hypocrisy of religious conservatives by taking old images of Jesus in many different settings and putting words in his mouth that are spoken from religious conservatives - it's hard not to cry sometimes at how abject the hypocrisy seems.

Of course, conservatives also like to turn our current president, Barack Obama, into a scary Marxist monster.  Conservatives have accused Obama of being too dark-skinned/muslim (the same thing in conservative speak), too socialist, too peace-making, and wanting to "give" away healthcare to the poor.  Religious politicians from the right have attempted character assassination, implying redistribution of wealth and universal healthcare to be terrible ideals ... of course, they think they know what Jesus would do.  This picture pretty  much summarizes my thoughts on the matter:

It's Natural

In my limited experience, this is still the most effective argument to win people over and get them to understand that homosexual desires are as natural as fruit bat blow jobs during copulation or male Right Whales double penetrating a female under the midday sun.  Via wickedgayblog: