Scott Walker: ‘I Don’t Know’ Whether Obama is a Christian

Scott Walker - pandering whore

Proving yet again that he is a disgusting demagogue and is only too willing to prostitute himself to the racists and Christofascists in the GOP base, Scott Walker has floated a balloon saying that he doesn't know if Barack Obama is a Christian.  This statement comes in the wake of Walker's refusal to state whether or not he believes in the theory of evolution. One has to wonder why Walker doesn't have "Liar/Whore" tattooed on his forehead.  The Washington Post looks at Walker's continued self-prostitution to the ugliest elements of the GOP base and subsequent attempt to walk back his dog whistle comment.  Here are some highlights:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a prospective Republican presidential contender, said Saturday he does not know whether President Obama is a Christian.

“I don’t know,” Walker said in an interview at the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, where he was attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

Told that Obama has frequently spoken publicly about his Christian faith, Walker maintained that he was not aware of the president’s religion.

Walker said such questions from reporters are reflective of a broader problem in the nation’s political-media culture, which he described as fixated on issues that are not relevant to most Americans.

“To me, this is a classic example of why people hate Washington and, increasingly, they dislike the press,” he said. “The things they care about don’t even remotely come close to what you’re asking about.”

Walker said he does not believe that most Americans care about such matters.“People in the media will [judge], not everyday people,” he said. “I would defy you to come to Wisconsin. You could ask 100 people, and not one of them would say that this is a significant issue.”

After the interview was completed, Walker spokeswoman Jocelyn Webster telephoned The Washington Post to say the governor was trying to make a point of principle by not answering such kinds of questions, not trying to cast doubt on Obama’s faith.

“Of course the governor thinks the president is a Christian,” she said. “He thinks these kinds of gotcha questions distract from what he’s doing as governor of Wisconsin to make the state better and make life better for people in his state.”

Walker’s comments Saturday came after a week in which he was asked repeatedly whether he agreed with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani when he said at a private dinner last Wednesday that he was not sure whether Obama loves his country. Walker was a guest at the dinner.

Later Saturday, Walker was scheduled to attend a gathering of conservative leaders with anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist.   Some figures on the right have consistently questioned Obama’s faith, with some suggesting that he is a Muslim. 

In my view, Scott Walker is one foul individual.  

Science Versus Religion: Which Has Contributed More to Mankind?

Click image to enlarge

In follow up to the last post which looked at the evils done by "godly Christian" folk, a piece at Why Evolution is True does a comparative analysis of the benefits to mankind provided by science versus religion.  Here are some highlights:

As a direct result of the inbuilt progress limitations inherent in religion, what religious progress we have seen over the last 50 years broadly falls into 2 camps.

Firstly there is the recognition that mainstream religion needs to catch up with modern views on items such as the equality of women and homosexuals. Despite lagging behind the rest of society, many progressive people within mainstream religious organizations recognize the need for equality beyond that originally foreseen by their religions’ founders and the need to upgrade their religion accordingly.

Alas, the second type of religious progress highlighted by the diagram [above shows an ugly form of religious progress that is becoming more and more familiar. When modern society is seen at odds with religious teachings many look to progress their faith towards a more literal interpretation of their scripture. Many faiths have regrettably progressed over recent years by branching out at the fringes to a more fundamentalist stance. Hence the chart below is littered with progress in the form of new creation museums, opposition to life saving medical procedures and numerous landmark cases of bigotry and discrimination. Not the sort of progress to be proud of.

What will it be, ladies and gentlemen: the eradication of smallpox or The Creation Museum?

 Readers really need to click and enlarge the image above to compare and contrast the contributions of science versus religion.  It's safe to say that the may "contributions" of religion are hate, the embrace of ignorance, violence against non-believers, and bigotry. 

Tennessee Evolution Bill Becomes Law

The celebration of ignorance and granting of special rights to Christians continues unabated in Tennessee where a law opens the door for the teaching of creationism - i.e., religion by any other name - in the state's public schools. Opponents have rightly dubbed the law as "The Monkey Bill" although it would seem that the title might better apply to the state legislators who voted for the abomination and the state's spineless governor who refused to veto the measure. No doubt the Christofascists at The Family Foundation will put such a bill on their marching orders to the Virginia GOP for the 2013 session of the General Assembly. Here are highlights from Huffington Post on this idiocy:

A Tennessee bill meant to protect teachers who allow students to question and criticize "controversial" subjects such as evolution and climate change became law on Tuesday after Gov. Bill Haslam (R) declined to act.

The state legislature had sent the bill to Haslam earlier this month. He had until Tuesday to veto it, sign it or allow it to pass without his signature.

Critics of the legislation have dubbed it the "Monkey Bill" and charge that it is anti-science, backdoor approval of the teaching of religion in schools that reminds of the state's history with the Scopes Trial.

"It would open the door to creationism, it would open the door to climate change denial, and to other sorts of pseudosciences being introduced into Tennessee classrooms," Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education told The Huffington Post last month.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union had also pressured Haslam to reject the bill, which they believed was an unconstitutional and unwise gateway for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public schools.

Most of the world is embracing modernity and the future even as the Christianists strive to make ignorance a principal hallmark of America. These people - and their political whores in the Republican party - continue to pose a clear and present danger to this nation.

The Bible Literalists Struggle to Argue that Genesis Isn't All Myth

I've written before about the huge problem facing those who support Biblical literalism now that science and the genome studies have pretty much proven that Adam and Eve never existed as historical figures. And the line of dominoes that fall as a result is that if Adam and Eve did not exist, there was no fall and banishment from the Garden of Eden and no need for a Messiah. Stated differently, the entire story line of Christianity collapses. Faced with this potentially fatal blow to the house of cards faith systems - and the monetary benefits reaped by professional Christians - some writers are endeavoring to engage in disingenuous mental and faith related contortions to avoid the inevitable conclusion: the Bible is not the inerrant word of God. And the creation story in Genesis is no more factual that the creation myths of other religions. A piece at Biologos exemplifies this losing battle to avoid the obvious. Here are some excerpts:

Genesis seems to affirm many things that the contemporary scientific consensus would disagree with, including but not limited to the following: the cause and source of creation (God versus Big Bang and random and/or natural processes), the length of time for creation (billions of years versus six days), the place of earth in reference to other celestial entities (earth is at the center according to a plain reading of Gen 1:14-17, which places the sun, moon, and starts ‘in’ the firmament, which is a solid dome, while scientists universally affirm that the earth goes around the sun.), the order of creation (day and night and vegetation come before the sun was created, according to Gen. 1:4-5, while current scientific theories would state that without light from the sun, there would be no day and no vegetation on earth), and whether or not there is or was a solid dome somewhere above the earth which is holding back the primal waters.

But, what if we read this passage of scripture differently? That is, what if think of Genesis 1 as something similar to a parable or an allegory, for instance? I do not mean to suggest that Genesis 1 is exactly a parable or allegory, but that there might be similarities between them, and that considering these similarities can help us move forward to reconsider how this passage might be read together with contemporary scientific consensus.

Parables and allegories, as we know, are stories told to convey deep and powerful truths. It is not the literal correspondence between each detail in a parable and actual reality that matters, but the central message and meaning of the parable.

And there are good reasons to take such an allegoric and contextual reading to Genesis 1. Indeed, we find many Ancient Near Eastern cultures to have held similar creation stories. . . . . This is to say that the peoples of the ancient world who were neighbors of the ancient Hebrews all believed that the world was created by divine beings who had separated and pushed back primal chaotic forces to create an orderly cosmos. Many also believed that the sky was a solid dome which held back water, which would have explained, for instance, the source of rain.

Now, just as it makes sense for God to have revealed himself in ways that first century Jews, Greeks, and Romans could understand, it also makes sense that God would have revealed himself in the time of ancient Israel in the ways that they and their neighbors could understand—that is, through the basic cosmological worldview that they would already understand. Looked at in this way, we may then begin to ask the question of what we can find that is different between the scripture and these heathen cosmogonies, and we begin, I think, to get a sense of what is truly at the heart of the biblical story of creation.

If we allow ourselves the room to see Genesis 1 as something similar to a parable or allegory, rich in symbolism and metaphor, spoken in a language and assuming a worldview that ancient Near Eastern people could understand, we are freed from having to defend the Bible against what otherwise appear to be disagreements with current scientific consensus…about the current structure of our solar system, about how the universe came into being, and even about how human beings came into the world

Nor do Christians, using scientific tools, need to buy into Satan’s lie that a universe that appears to function in an orderly, natural way came into being and functions as it does all by itself. We Christians know better. We believe and scripture affirms that God created this good world, that God created its laws, principles, and elements. We need not, therefore, fear science. It is a gift from God given to the church to understand God’s handiwork in the world, to worship God for God’s majesty and wonder as its creator, and to serve God’s purposes as caretakers for the people and the creation that God loves.

I'm sorry, but these attempts do not save the Bible from being false in the final analysis and less than authoritative on myriad issues. Indeed, if the Bible is parable or allegory, then nothing in it can be taken literally - including the supposed condemnations of homosexuality. And the result is that the Old testament of the Bible is nothing more than a competing creation myth (and subsequent tribal myths) with everything else in it built upon sand. As more people grasp this reality, expect the hysterics of the professional Christian set to increase as the make a last effort to hold on to the power and control that they have wrongfully wielded for far too long.

The Christianist Struggle to Ignore the Non-Existence Adam and Eve

While the Christianists and their political whores in the Republican Party like to depict gays and gay marriage as the biggest menace facing western civilization and the Christianists' perverted version of Christianity, in actuality, by far the much bigger threat is the fact that science has pretty much proven that the Adam and Eve of Genesis never existed. They are merely a myth promoted by ignorant and uneducated nomadic tribesman. And it follows that, if they never existed, there was no serpent and Fall, no Original sin, no exile from the Garden of Eden, and ultimately no need for a Messiah. Or certainly not a Messiah as depicted in the Bible which the Christianists and Christian fundamentalists like to describe as "the inerrant word of God." Indeed, the Bible proves to be anything but inerrant and the entire story line of most of the Bible collapses. What one is left with is one folk version - and many others exist - of the origin of the earth and mankind. Moreover, the role of Christ as the Messiah who the New Testament claims to have been predicted by the Old Testament likewise falls into serious question.

While the reality of this enormous theological crisis has not trickled down to local parishes and pastors, the danger to Christianity (especially the fundamentalist version) as we know it has not been lost by some in the upper tiers of various denominations or in more intellectually inclined seminaries. And frankly, the problem is not one that can be easily circumvented unless one is willing to simply embrace ignorance and close one's eyes to the truth - something that unfortunately many fundamentalist seem all too ready to do. In a piece on Huffington Post, Pete Enns, former Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary for 14 years and currently a professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University, tries to paper over the devastating blow the non-existence of Adam and Eve. Ultimately, while he tries to explain away why Adam and Eve should not be taken to be historic personages, he fails to address the fact that without them, the whole Christian messages collapses. Here are highlights from his post:

If evolution is right about how humans came to be, then the biblical story of Adam and Eve isn't. If you believe, as evangelicals do, that God himself is responsible for what's in the Bible, you have a problem on your hands. Once you open the door to the possibility that God's version of human origins isn't what actually happened -- well, the dominoes start unraveling down the slippery slope. The next step is uncertainty, chaos and despair about one's personal faith.

That, more or less, is the evangelical log flume of fear, and I have seen it played out again and again.

In recent years, the matter has gotten far worse. Popular figures like Richard Dawkins have done an in-your-face-break-the-backboard-slam-dunk over the heads of defenders of the biblical story. They've taken great delight in making sure Main Street knows evolution is true, and therefore the Bible is "God's big book of bad ideas" (Bill Maher) and Christians are morons for taking it seriously. Evangelicals have been on high alert damage control mode.

Evolution is a threat, and many evangelicals are fighting to keep Adam in the family photo album. But in their rush to save Christianity, some evangelicals have been guilty of all sorts of strained, idiosyncratic or obscurantist tactics: massaging or distorting the data, manipulating the legal system, scaring their constituencies and strong-arming those of their own camp who raise questions.

These sorts of tactics get a lot of press, but behind them is a deeper problem -- a problem that gets close to the heart of evangelicalism itself and hampers any true dialogue. It has to do with what evangelicals expect from the Bible.

Evangelicals look to the Bible to settle important questions of faith. So, faced with a potentially faith-crushing idea like evolution, evangelicals naturally ask right off the bat, "What does the Bible say about that?" And then informed by "what the Bible says," they are ready to make a "biblical" judgment.

This is fine in principle, but in the evolution debate this mindset is a problem: It assumes that the Adam and Eve story is about "human origins." It isn't. And as long as evangelicals continue to assume that it does, the conflict between the Bible and evolution is guaranteed.

Israel's story was written to say something about their place in the world and the God they worshiped. To think that the Israelites, alone among all other ancient peoples, were interested in (or capable of) giving some definitive, quasi-scientific, account of human origins is an absurd logic. And to read the story of Adam and Eve as if it were set up to do such a thing [explain human origins] is simply wrongheaded.

Reading the biblical story against its ancient backdrop is hardly a news flash, and most evangelical biblical scholars easily concede the point. But for some reason this piece of information has not filtered down to where it is needed most: into the mainstream evangelical consciousness. Once it does, evangelicals will see for themselves that dragging the Adam and Eve story into the evolution discussion is as misguided as using the stories of Israel's monarchy to rank the Republican presidential nominees.

Evangelicals tend to focus on how to protect the Bible against the attacks of evolution. The real challenge before them is to reorient their expectation of what the story of Adam and Eve is actually prepared to deliver. These kinds of conversations are already happening, though too often quietly and behind closed doors. Evangelicals owe it to their children and their children's children to bring the discussion out into the open.

The fact that the Bible is not inerrant - indeed, it's flat out wrong on many things - terrifies evangelicals and fundamentalists. Their entire neat little world falls apart and, perhaps most terrifying of all, they have to think for themselves and find a way to live with uncertainty. As a corollary to this, I continue to believe that gays are a flash point with evangelicals because if the Bible is wrong about us, then it's likely wrong about most if not everything. Which means they have wasted their lives and often been miserable for no legitimate reason. And that realization is the worse of all.

Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a Fact

I've posted numerous times about the Republican Party's mad embrace of ignorance - and ignorant candidates. It's as if the more ignorant and objective and scientific truth denying a candidate is, the better he/she will be received by the base of the Republican Party. Evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins is interviewed in the Washington Post and makes on point comments on Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Republican Party's race to total ignorance. Here are highlights from that interview:

A. There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.

Will Biblical Literalists Be the Death of Christianity?

I've written a couple of previous posts on the issue that could cause the Christianist theological house of cards to come tumbling down: the fact that Adam and Eve did not actually exist. I've long believed that those who claim that the Bible is inerrant and that it must be read as literally true in ever respect (except, of course when inconvenient) in fact (1) have a very brittle and superficial faith and (2) are doomed to have their belief system disintegrate as knowledge advances. Albert Mohler - a head honcho within the virulently anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention leadership - recognizes the extreme danger facing his denomination. If there was no Adam and Eve and no Garden of Eden, then likewise there was no serpent and fall of mankind setting the stage for the need for a messiah. The whole fabric of the far right Christians' religious world is rendered asunder. The irony is that it's their own idolatry of the Bible as inerrant that makes to collapse of the Christianist belief system likely unavoidable. Here are highlights from Mohler's blog they lays out the severity of the threat scientific truths pose to his world:

In terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the most urgent question related to beginnings has to do with the questions related to the existence of Adam and Eve as as them first parents to all humanity and to the reality of the Fall as the explanation for human sinfulness and all that comes with sin.

A report from Barbara Bradley Hagerty of National Public Radio a few weeks is an undeniable sign that even the secular world now recognizes that this is a question central to Christianity. . . . Hagerty then talked to John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College for many years. Schneider took the argument even further. As Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face facts: There was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.”

At this point we are looking at a repudiation of the Bible’s account of beginnings. We are not talking about an argument over the interpretation of a few verses or even chapters of the Bible. We are now dealing with the straightforward rejection, not only of the existence of Adam and Eve, but of both Eden and the Fall. Look carefully at Professor Schneider’s words — “there never was any such paradise to be lost.”

The implications for biblical authority are clear, as is the fact that, if these arguments hold sway, we will have to come up with an entirely new understanding of the Gospel meta-narrative and the Bible’s storyline. The denial of an historical Adam and Eve as the first parents of all humanity and the solitary first human pair severs the link between Adam and Christ which is so crucial to the Gospel.

If we do not know how the story of the Gospel begins, then we do not know what that story means. Make no mistake: A false start to the story produces a false grasp of the Gospel.

Common sense in the modern age ought to have made it clear to Mohler and those like him that a literal reading of the Bible was bound to lead to catastrophe and a crisis of faith for sheeple. The Bible's creation story has no more factual accuracy to it than any of the competing creation myths from other religions across the centuries. All represent the attempt by ignorant, uneducated peoples to come up with a story of how existence began.

Science Versus Bible Inerrancy - Can Theology Evolve?

I've written recently here about the vulnerability of Christianists to scientific knowledge under cutting their claims that the Bible is inerrant and causing their whole house of cards belief system to teeter and collapse. Over time, I believe that it will prove to be the Bible literalists who will be responsible for the death of Christianity - or at least the toxic, conservative version of the faith. Also at risk is the Roman Catholic Church which for centuries has used "original sin" as the bogey man to keep the laity under the puppet strings of the Church hierarchy. A new Forbes article takes a further look at the issue of science setting up conservative Christianity for a huge fall. It may not happen overnight, but ultimately science will win out. Here are some article highlights:

Perhaps apropos the recent Nature article on the increasing evidence that modern humans have inherited the genes of more than a few now-extinct relatives on the evolutionary tree, NPR hosted a short program on what this all means for one of the fundamental stories of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Adam and Eve.

University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne sums up the problem in his inimitable fashion: I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament, which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness. These can then be saved only by post facto theological rationalizations about why humans are special in an evolutionary sense, and also sufficiently sinful to require salvation.

The question arises: Can theology adapt to the findings of science? Can the strict monogenism of the human race as traditionally understood by Christians, be modified to the scientific consensus that the human species originated in a small population, not a single couple? . . . .

Christians have for centuries adapted to a more allegorical interpretation of many books in the Old Testament. But not the Book of Genesis and its account of the Fall and Expulsion from Eden. To be sure, not all branches of Christianity are necessarily put on the spot by this. The NPR story only discusses the issue as it is faced by evangelical Christians.

The Catholic Church indeed of all the Christian churches faces a particular quandary. The Council of Trent is quite explicit on the topic. Catholics are required to believe not only that Adam is the single father of the human race, but that Original Sin is passed on by physical generation from him to the entire human race. It’s not something symbolic or allegorical.

The First Vatican Council reiterated the doctrine, as did Pope Pius XII in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis: For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

There are to be sure individual Catholic theologians out there mulling over how to handle the problem. But they are not on the Vatican’s radar, and a new encyclical on the issue is not likely to come very soon. This is unfortunate. For while the Vatican maintains its silence on the challenge of genomics, Catholics in general are either encouraged to fall back on the denialism of Evangelical leaders like Albert Mohler, or to keep their mouths shut.

One might almost feel some sympathy for those who have refused to open their eyes to scientific truths and clung to fairy tale like accounts written by uneducated tribes in Palestine. But I'm not one to show such sympathy to either to the professional Christians or those who have deliberately stuck their heads in the sand. The creator gave all of us intellect and the ability to think and reason, yet some have chosen ignorance. With the Internet and access to information on a scale unseen in previous generations leaves very few with an excuse that they did not now any better.

Rational Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve

News bulletin to NOM and the hate merchants at FRC, AFA and Mission America: rational and tethered to objective reality evangelicals are starting to question the historical existence of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Obviously, if the was no Adam and Eve, the hate groups' slogan of "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" goes to Hell in a hand basket in short order. And for the Roman Catholic Church too, if Adam and Eve did not really exist, the doctrine of original sin and the debased nature of human kind likewise takes a major hit. Bob Felton sums up the danger signals for far right, Bible beating Christians:

The difficulty is obvious:
■ No Adam and Eve, then …
■ No Fall, and …
■ No Original Sin, and …
■ No need for salvation; Christianity then becomes just one of many ethical systems — and no more.

NPR has an article that looks at this growing heresy, at least in the minds of the wingnut crazies, which truly does strike at the heart of the "Bible is inerrant" crowd. Here are some highlights:

[N]ow some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

Venema says there is no way we can be traced back to a single couple. He says with the mapping of the human genome, it's clear that modern humans emerged from other primates as a large population — long before the Genesis time frame of a few thousand years ago. And given the genetic variation of people today, he says scientists can't get that population size below 10,000 people at any time in our evolutionary history.

To get down to just two ancestors, Venema says, "You would have to postulate that there's been this absolutely astronomical mutation rate that has produced all these new variants in an incredibly short period of time. Those types of mutation rates are just not possible. It would mutate us out of existence."

Venema is a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Christian group that tries to reconcile faith and science. The group was founded by Francis Collins, an evangelical and the current head of the National Institutes of Health, who, because of his position, declined an interview.

To many evangelicals, this is heresy. "From my viewpoint, a historical Adam and Eve is absolutely central to the truth claims of the Christian faith," says Fazale Rana, vice president of Reasons To Believe, an evangelical think tank that questions evolution. Rana, who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ohio University, readily admits that small details of Scripture could be wrong.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, . . . . says the Adam and Eve story is not just about a fall from paradise: It goes to the heart of Christianity. He notes that the Apostle Paul (in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) argued that the whole point of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection was to undo Adam's original sin. "Without Adam, the work of Christ makes no sense whatsoever in Paul's description of the Gospel, which is the classic description of the Gospel we have in the New Testament," Mohler says.

This debate over a historical Adam and Eve is not just another heady squabble. It's ripping apart the evangelical intelligentsia. . . . "The evolution controversy today is, I think, a Galileo moment," says Karl Giberson, who authored several books trying to reconcile Christianity and evolution, including The Language of Science and Faith, with Francis Collins.

Giberson — who taught physics at Eastern Nazarene College until his views became too uncomfortable in Christian academia — says Protestants who question Adam and Eve are akin to Galileo in the 1600s, who defied Catholic Church doctrine by stating that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Galileo was condemned by the church, and it took more than three centuries for the Vatican to express regret at its error.

Fuzale Rana isn't so sure this is a Galileo moment: That would imply the scientists are correct. But he does believe the stakes are even higher in today's battle over evolution. It is not just about the movement of the earth, but about the nature of God and man, of sin and redemption.

"I think this is going to be a pivotal point in Church history," he says. "Because what rests at the very heart of this debate is whether or not key ideas within Christianity are ultimately true or not.",/blockquote>

For the record, I support the Gospel message of love of neighbor and not judging others. As for the institutional Church in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and other denominations which make hatred of others and judgment of others their hallmark - and in the process savage the Gospel message - I hope this is a growing trend that cuts these institutions and people off at the knee caps.

Creationists Warn That Teaching Evolution Leads to Gay Agenda

I always find it instructive that those who utilize propaganda practices strikingly similar to the NAZI model used against the Jews are always trying to say that it is others, not they themselves who are the perpetrators of NAZI like behavior. A case in point? The untethered loonies at the Creation Studies Institute are warning members that, like the Nazis, gay-rights activists are using public schools to indoctrinate students. Meanwhile, it is the Creationists and the Christianists who are seeking to inflict their religious beliefs on all citizens and the Christianists who are the main opponents of programs in schools that would try to stop students from literally being bullied to death. Right Wing Watch looks at the disingenuous bullshit being disseminated by the Bible clutching nut cases who are the real perpetrators of NAZI like lies about gays and others who they deem inferior. Here are some highlights:
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DeRosa goes on to compare homosexuality with polygamy and pedophilia, and asks members to purchase Focus on the Family’s Secure Daughters, Confident Sons booklet:
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Those who hold godless ideologies have long understood that the best way to transform societies and change the way people traditionally think is by indoctrinating children from the earliest stages of education. In the last century, this methodology was effectively employed by those who held the atheistic ideologies of Nazism in Germany and Communism in countries such as the Soviet Union, where the state assumed total control of the educational system—even to the extent of turning children against parents.
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In America, the adoption of evolution in our schools has paved the way for the introduction of the gay agenda. Those pushing it understand that nothing will more thoroughly and quickly undermine the traditional biblical foundations of our country than the normalization of homosexuality among our nation’s school children, regardless of their parents’ beliefs. Currently, under the banner of “tolerance” or “equal rights,” states like Massachusetts, New York, California, Wisconsin and Minnesota are actively implementing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) curriculum in their public schools. But those behind the effort to legitimize LGBT lifestyles won’t be content until this kind of curricula is taught in all of our nation’s schools.
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From the patriarchal days of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Law of Moses to the New Testament, God’s Word consistently declares that homosexuality is sin and warns of the condemnation it brings to the individuals who practice it and to societies that promote it. Indeed, the rampant teaching of evolution in our schools that is effectively undermining belief in God and absolute moral standards is not only creating an atmosphere of “tolerance” for homosexuality, but for just about anything.

Creationism and Racism; Bigotry as a Fundraiser

Two posts that I happened upon look at two issues that I have referenced on many occasions: (1) the Christian Right's use of anti-gay hysteria as a fundraising tool and (2) the latent racism just beneath the surface of professional Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council ans similar "pro-family" organizations. The Christianists have truly turned Christianity into a toxic poison and the racial hatred and love of money that lie below the surface need to be exposed. I find it incredibly ironic that the white Christianists routinely co-opt the black clergy into doing their biding even though in reality they despise blacks. The first piece is found at Patrol Magazine and is entitled: Fear Factor - When evangelical organizations use homophobia and political dishonesty to get members to contribute. Here are some highlights:
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If you are still confused about what this has to do with balancing the budget at a Christian institution, welcome to the depressing world of evangelical fundraising. The letter I received, signed by the school’s chancellor, quickly extrapolated that England’s draconian infringements on religious speech will be hopping the Atlantic any day now, necessitating the recipient’s generous donation to Patrick Henry for the training of “scholar-warriors.” It concluded with a repudiation of Western higher education in favor of a more radical system that gives students “a plan of boldness and courage rather than one of secrecy and silence.”
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To make things worse, that was the second letter I read last week that managed through a series of spectacular demagogic acrobatics to hold up encroaching, government-mandated gayness as the impetus for eager donation. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins spammed members with a 6-page letter (PDF) falsely warning that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would “empower Washington to silence your faith.”
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I hope that a minority of Christians would ever bother to read a Family Research Council action alert. But the shameless political hackery on display in these and other similar evangelical missives is too high-profile and too un-Christian for it not to be addressed thoroughly and publicly.
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First, there is the basic issue of honesty. Advocacy and activism groups exist to raise their particular issue out of the chaos of political discourse, often by labeling opponents and only telling half of the truth. Washington works that way. But the statements of Christian advocacy groups are closely scrutinized by political actors and curious individuals alike, and, if they are to wear the faith badge, must at very least meet minimal standards of honesty. That wouldn’t seem to be so much to ask of an organization that purports to defend a faith that abhors lying.
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More disturbing is the willingness to take a bristling, irrational stance toward homosexuality, an issue that the church—with a few notable exceptions—has already failed to address with any sort of grace. I have resisted the bullying characterization of all gay marriage opponents as bigoted yahoos, but to take a religiously conservative stand on the issue requires almost superhuman amounts of love, humility and nuance. The firebrand tone of these fundraising letters is exactly the opposite; it is openly comfortable with capitalizing financially on unfounded fear of the men and women next door.
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Clearly, the most dishonest people nowadays in terms of never telling the truth are the professional Christians such as Tony Perkins and James Dobson. They would not know the truth if it hit them in the side of their heads. The second piece looks at the correlation between those who believe in creationism and racial bigotry - something I have noted as an undercurrent on "pro-family" organization web sites for years. The column appears at The Sensuous Curmudgeon and follows the "inerrant Biblical reasoning" that supports racism among evangelicals. Here are some highlights (read the full column):

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LIKE most on informed side of The Controversy, your Curmudgeon has spent time debunking lies told about Darwin. See Racism, Eugenics, and Darwin. But we’re getting tired of being on the defensive. Today we’re placing the racism issue exactly where it belongs — in the camp of the creationists. We’re going to beat them over the head with the club they’ve been trying to use on us. We’re going to expose the racism that lurks not far beneath the surface of the typical creationist.
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Any understanding of the creationism-racism topic must begin with William Jennings Bryan, one of the most loathsome creatures in American history — populist, creationist, advocate of the income tax and currency debasement — and a once-dominant figure in American politics. . . . Bryan’s role in the Scopes Trial is well known, and widely applauded by creationists; but they never point out that all through his career, Bryan was supported by the Klan.
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Today’s Social Conservatives, who also label themselves as the family values crowd, tend to be very close to Bryan in their thinking. But they’re rarely so tasteless as to openly endorse Bryan’s racism. Yet we sense it in their insistence on creationism.
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Let the truth be known! Racism is the always-present but never-mentioned motive for rejecting evolution and its corollary of common descent. Deep within every creationist is the secret fear that — gasp! — evolution means we’re related to … them! And you know who they are.

The clear message is conveyed, without a spoken word, that humans evolved from dark-skinned, hairy, wide-nosed creatures with sloped foreheads and jutting jowls. But the skin color, size of the nose and lips, and amount of hair are not supported by science, only assumed by evolution.

The “skin color, size of the nose and lips” — how offensive! If you click over to the Wired article you can see the image Deak created. Imagine how that strikes a creationist who believes in the literal truth of Genesis 1:27, which says: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. The creationist thinks: In His image, yes — but not that image! . . . They may rant and rave about dozens of other debunked issues, but deep down in the guts of the typical creationist lurks the dreaded specter of a family tree showing that he’s related to … them!

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A related corollary is that if Goad created gays in His image, then we are like the Christianists and they are likewise made in our image - a thought that frightens the crap out of them.

Andrew Sullivan- Leaving the Right

I've made no secret that I once was a Republican - an active Republican in fact, holding a seat on the Virginia Beach City Committee for the GOP just short of eight (8) years, served as a precinct captain and worked on many campaigns. In those days, most of my extended family were also Republicans or at least voted Republican. Something that extended back to the days growing up in Central New York when Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York. But the Party and conservatism have changed. The result was that I and many family members left the GOP - or more accurately, the GOP left us as it increasing became a party of reaction controlled increasingly by religious fundamentalists. If you believe in the separation of church and state and that religion should not shape civil rights, it virtually became impossible to remain a Republican in good conscience. Many others have experienced the same thing. One is Andrew Sullivan who describes why he left the Right in a recent blog post. His post sums up many of my thoughts. Here are some highlights:

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[I]n so far as it [The Right] means the dominant mode of discourse among the institutions and blogs and magazines and newspapers and journals that support the GOP, Charles Johnson is absolutely right in my view to get off that wagon for the reasons has has stated. Read his testament. It is full of emotion, but also of honesty.

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[T]here has to come a point at which a movement or party so abandons core principles or degenerates into such a rhetorical septic system that you have to take a stand. It seems to me that now is a critical time for more people whose principles lie broadly on the center-right to do so - against the conservative degeneracy in front of us.
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[M]y attachment to the Anglo-American conservative political tradition, as I understand it, is real and deep and the result of sincere reflection on the world as I see it. And I want that tradition to survive because I believe it is a vital complement to liberalism in sustaining the genius and wonder of the modern West. For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America.
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My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul"). Here goes:
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I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.
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I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.
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I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.
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I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.
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I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.
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I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.
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I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.
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I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.
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I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.
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I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.
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Does this make me a "radical leftist" as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right. To paraphrase Reagan, I didn't leave the conservative movement. It left me. And increasingly, I'm not alone.

The Twilight of American Culture

As Bob Felton notes over at Civil Commotion, The Economist ranks countries according to their acceptance of the theory of evolution. It's not pretty as to where the USA falls in the rankings:

Of course, if the Christianists have their way, as a nation we will be dumbed down even further. As I said in an earlier post, these folks and their anti-knowledge agenda are a threat to the nation's long term survival.