Do Christians have any obligation to use reason, to be rational about the world at large? Blatzkrieg writes about the issue here, especially with regard to vaccination phobics. (A few people in every community can safely go without vaccinations, if everyone else gets them. In too many communities, we have too many going without, for religious, political and economic reasons, and that puts us all at risk.)
It bugs the heck out of me, the “I-don’t-have-to-think;-I’m-a-Christian” view that tends to emphasize the snarkier bumper-sticker views on everything, and usually the wrong bumper-sticker. How many times today can you find someone telling you the equivalent of “I’m sure Millard Fillmore put the first plumbed bathtub in the White House, because I have faith he did — and he probably invented plumbing, too?”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Vox Day writes a column at the abominable WorldNet Daily.Also he blogs. Frequently he demonstrates the flight of reason from those pages, such as his column on July 7, in which he wrote:
What is interesting is observable evidence shows that even professional evolutionary biologists are increasingly frightened to expose themselves to the ridicule that the softness of their science renders them liable. Consider this recent post at the science blog Pharyngula by Dr. P.Z. Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, entitled Don’t Debate Creationists.
Why does that demonstrate Day’s flight from reason? Here, let me explain.
First, Day establishes as his premise that real biologists, scientists who practice in the real world and actually understand Darwin and evolution, are “afraid to expose themselves to the ridicule that the softness of their science renders them liable.” In short, he’s saying they don’t talk to the public.
His evidence? He cites a blog post by P. Z. Myers, an evolutionary development biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, a co-founder of and frequent contributor to the evolution-promoting weblog Panda’s Thumb, and the creator and author of the science weblog Pharyngula.
So, what Day is saying is that Myers doesn’t bother to expose himself to public scrutiny despite Myers’ being a distinguished researcher and teacher who daily exposes himself to tens of thousands of readers on two of the most heavily trafficked blogs in the world — generally, many times each day — in addition to his work exposing himself to other scientists via his research publications, and through his teaching several classes.
Right. And preachers never speak, Pope Benedict is not Catholic, and polar bears don’t defecate on the ice or in the water. Nor is the sky blue.
Of such evidence are most rants at WorldNet Daily made.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
. . . Ken Ham’s creationist museum is established. An amateur geologist/paleontologist in Cincinnati lets the rocks tell their own story. Interestingly, the story they cry out is not the one promoted by Ken Ham.
Okay. I’ve had five or six people send me links to a YouTube video of Ron and Kay Rivoli singing “Press One for English.” Ha. Ha.
It’s a rant about language accommodations. Some Americans, free marketeers for the most part, get all buggy when confronted with a free market in language choices. America is becoming more global, marketing more goods in more places, and getting visited by more people. This growth in commerce brings things like American Airlines’ Spanish language reservations center (Who would have thought? When they can make reservations in Spanish, Spanish speakers buy a lot more airplane tickets.)
And Ron and Kay Rivoli put these fears into a song. Funny.
Can we talk? Can I pick a bone? Ron and Kay Rivoli insult the U.S. flag. They may not mean to do it, they may have done it unthinkingly — but that’s the problem with the whole rant: It’s all unthinking.
Here are the flag insults:
44 seconds into the video three servicemen are shown saluting the U.S. flag, displayed with the flag of California and the POW-MIA flag. Contrary to the Flag Code and good flag etiquette, the U.S. flag is in the center, rather than to its own right. A center display would be acceptable if the center flag pole were higher than the others — but in this case the U.S. flag’s pole is lower than the other two. Two flag insults at once.
At 2:59 into the video, the flag is shown as cut into an agricultural field of some kind. The Flag Code specifies that the flag is never to be displayed flat. The flag should fly free. Since this flag is cut into a crop on the ground, it cannot be displayed properly. Further, it is generally considered poor etiquette to make representations of the flag out of things other than cloth.
This is all highly ironic. At 1:37 into the video, a scroll of the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote on English as the only language scrolls by. “We have room for but one flag, the American flag,” Roosevelt said (oops — there goes the POW-MIA flag). “We have room but for one language, and that is the English language,” Roosevelt continues.
They use the flag they insult as a model for going for one language? This makes no sense.
Do I pick nits? No, I think that every educated American should know the flag code, and should avoid insult to the U.S. flag at least, if not honor it correctly. I am not pedantic about a lot of things, but this is one.
Ron and Kay Rivoli, you owe America and its flag apologies. Get straight with the flag, before you ask me to insult the traditional languages and free enterprise heritage of our nation. If you want my support, don’t tread on the American flag when you ask it.
The Rivolis owe apologies to the U.S. flag. Will we see it?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In a classroom discussion of “how do we know what we know” about history, another student brought up the allegations that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) faked the manned Moon landings. That makes about a dozen times this year a kid has mentioned this claim (who thinks to start counting these things?). The kid was pretty unshakable in his convictions — after all, he said, how can a flag wave in a vacuum?
I usually mention a couple of things that the fake claimers leave out — that dozens, if not hundreds, of amateur astronomers tracked the astronauts on their way to the Moon, that many people intercepted the radio transmissions from the Moon, that one mission retrieved debris from an earlier unmanned landing, etc. Younger students who lack experience in serious critical thinking have difficulty with these concepts. They also lack the historic background — the last manned Moon landing occurred when their parents were kids, perhaps. They didn’t grow up with NASA launches on television, and the whole world holding its breath to see what wonders would be found in space.
From the very first moment to the very last, the program is loaded with bad thinking, ridiculous suppositions and utterly wrong science. I was able to get a copy of the show in advance, and although I was expecting it to be bad, I was still surprised and how awful it was. I took four pages of notes. I won’t subject you to all of that here; it would take hours to write. I’ll only go over some of the major points of the show, and explain briefly why they are wrong.
Also, consider these chunks of evidence, which Phil does not mention so far as I know:
First, the first Moon landing left a mirror on the surface, off of which Earth-bound astronomers may bounce laser transmissions in order to measure exactly the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 