The Morning Heresy 8/10/12: Getting NPawkwaRd with David Barton

Cody Hashman — 2012-08-10T14:18+00:00

Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

Today’s morning heretic is Cody Hashman. Your regularly scheduled Morning Heresy with Paul Fidalgo will return on August 13th.

This is important: There is less than one week left to sign the petition the Center for Inquiry submitted to the White House to ask the President and the administration to publicly address the plight of jailed Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan, as well as that of religious dissidents and nonbelievers in Indonesia.

The Religious Right’s favorite history hack, David Barton, is back with another book, The Jefferson Lies. Well, was back, but more on that in a second. Anyway, NPR did a little exposé on Barton and his attempts to shed us all of our “secular” (I use scare quotes becaue I think Barton would appreciate that) indoctrination about the nature of the United States’ religious history. Facts are funny things and NPR decided to look into some of Barton’s claims. This didn’t bode well for him.

We looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out. Moreover, the Constitution as written in 1787 has no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office. The First Amendment does address religion.

Things didn’t necessarily get better for Barton or his “facts” for the remainder of the article either. One final note: Barton’s publishers have decided to halt distribution of The Jefferson Lies, citing a loss of confidence.

Many of you may know, or should know, that Robert Ingersoll’s birthday is tomorrow. Take a second to read this awesome article on “the most remarkable American most people never heard of.” He would have been 179 years old tomorrow.

Speaking of old things, this article from 2010 about the Pope lifting the ban on condom use keeps showing up in my Facebook and twitters. Get with the program, people! I’ll let it slide this time because the Morning Heresy was not around in 2010.

Some fossilized skulls have been discovered that help settle a long-standing dispute and show that at least three distinct species belonging to the genus Homo existed between 1.7 million and 2 million years ago.

Amnesty International has an online petition calling for the release of the three members of the activist group Pussy Riot. They are being charged for “hooliganism.” For more information about the whole Pussy Riot fiasco, check out Debbie Goddard’s post over at Skepchick.

Someone doesn’t like r/atheism. Another person disagrees with that opinion.

The “U.S. Should Adopt Higher Standards for Science Education,” says Scientific American.

Dori Hartley over at the Huffington Post reflects on her “atheistic journey.”

Check out Carl Sagan’s childhood vision of outer space.

Quote of the Day

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

— Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Gods”, 1876

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Cody, or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

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The Morning Heresy: “I actually read it.” - Hemant Mehta

The Morning Heresy 8/8/12: Everyone, Eat Your Cheerios!

Cody Hashman — 2012-08-08T14:40+00:00

Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

Today’s morning heretic is Cody Hashman. Paul is out on a vision quest to find his chakras or spirit animal or something. It’s ok though, he is safe because I’m pretty sure he is wearing his power band. I might be wrong, though, because someone just told me he is tending to a newborn, which means I am mixing my dreams and reality again (dammit!). I have been assured he will be returning on August 13th.

In other Paul Fidalgo news, evidently, as an atheist, you don’t have to be angry at everything.

Paul writes:

But what I’ve come to realize, particularly as the humanist side of atheism has made me fuse it with my political and social justice interests (the latest Free Inquiry has a whole special section on this topic), that while I think their positions are philosophically and scientifically laughable, their places on the ideological spectrum are close enough to mine to consider them allies rather than enemies.

Reading that piece didn’t make me mad, so perhaps there is merit to what Paul is saying.

In case you didn’t seen this fail of a video, a Minnesota based Christian radio host, Michael Leisner, was recorded lighting fire to some Honey Nut Cheerios on the grounds of General Mills. Well, the demonstration got a little out of control and Leisner ended up setting fire to more than just the Cheerios. Why was he doing this? Gay people are ruining America, duh. It also appears he was recently fired from his job.

Does this mean I have to eat more Cheerios? I’m getting lost in all of this snacktivism. Eat chicken. Don’t eat chicken. Burn Cheerios. The purple Oreos are the gay friendly ones, but stay away from those homophobic mint double-stuffed Oreos because the second batch of filling is pure hate. I’m lost. Can someone make me an infographic?

Good news on the health front! The Obama administration, after being contacted by a coalition of LGBT groups, has affirmed that it will look into reported cases and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination against transgendered individuals. A report on the memo can be found at Buzzfeed and the memo itself can be found here.

The Skepticon team is doing an AMA at 8PM (ET) on reddit this evening. Check the r/IAmA subreddit around that time to ask the team about kittens and skepticism.

Greta gives us 4 good reasons why atheist have to fight for their rights. I’ll be waiting for the follow up piece, “4 Reasons Atheists Have to Fight for Their Right to Party.”

Evidently the gunman of the shooting at the Wisconsin Sikh temple was eyed by the feds on more than one occasion for suggesting to acquaintances that a “racial holy war was coming.”

Enter ol’ Pat Robertson with another opinion about the recent Sikh temple tragedy. He suggests—as he was presumably told by God after bench pressing 1,500 lbs—that clearly atheists are the reason for the shooting, not a neo-Nazi white supremacist.

Also, while we are talking about fundy word-vomit, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association recently tweeted that we need an “Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.” I…have no comment.

In case you have been living under a rock, we (well, robots that we made) landed on Mars in a blaze of sky-crane/parachute awesomeness. Here is a video of the descent.

Finally, it would appear that the penalty for abusing a non-existent being (aka swearing in a church) in Russia is three years in prison. At least that’s what a Russian prosecutor is demanding in the case against the Russian members of the activist group/band Pussy Riot who are being charged with hooliganism instead of inciting religious hatred which would have carried a maximum penatly of 7 years in prison.