Sunday, December 17, 2006

Happy Holidays from the FSM

This fellow made a beautiful likeness of His Noodly Appendages in Xmas lights. (HT: UTI)

Pat Boone gets fisked, and rightly so, for more WorldNUTdaily bullshit on our "Christian Nation". (HT: DftCW)

I'll never buy a Michael Crichton again, and you shouldn't, either. (HT: JG)

I also thought I'd share our Xmas card:


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Update on Sternberg

And it only reinforces and clarifies the utter vacuity of any claim to discrimination towards the man, although the Disco Institute purports, of course, that the opposite is true. See the updated section of my Sternberg Saga post for details. See the outline for a full review of the debacle.

**UPDATE: Steve Reuland has the goods:
That pretty much does it for any material harm that Sternberg may have suffered -- quite simply, there was none...In the end, the appendix attached to the Souter report not only fails to support any of the report's conclusions, it directly contradicts them. Sternberg suffered no harm as a result of the row he created when he inappropriately published the Meyer paper. Indeed, the emails paint a picture of the staff doing what they could to accommodate him in spite of a long history of causing problems, both with his mishandling of the collections and library materials and his bad editorial practices.
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Thursday, December 14, 2006

Of Creationists and "Missing Link(s)"

This article by Abacquer of Unbecoming Levity is hands-down the best parable-style writing I've seen explaining the non-problem of "missing link(s)" in evolutionary theory. Props to DagoodS, co-blogger at Debunking Christianity.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

One Word:

pathetic.

The boy took a cardboard cutout of Jesus to the mall to evangelize. It's always easier to believe in something when there's evidence it actually exists.
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Monday, December 11, 2006

More Christians Falling Into Our Trap

Rejoice, my fellow heathen! More Christians are being duped into joining us in the War on Christ- Xmas®! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha...

They even bought our lies about the pagan origins of Xmas, and the completely unbiblical rituals and customs of these holy-days!

Only one last major obstacle remains to be defeated: Stephen Colbert, and his "Blitzkreig on Grinchitude": a brilliant counter-offensive, a "war on the war on Christmas", if you will. This man is cunning and powerful, we must not misunderestimate him.

Also see:
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Sunday, December 10, 2006

COTG #55

The 55th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at Kingdom of Heathen. It appears that Aeger, the host, may have missed that Jeff G's post was arguing against the veracity of the "argument from religious experiences" -- "Indeed, I will conclude that by taking such religious experiences seriously, by not degrading them, the skeptic has a powerful argument against such an argument for God."

The pope said yesterday,
"Today there is talk of secular thought, secular morality, secular science, secular politics." A concept that must be rejected because it is based on "an unreligious vision of life, thought and morality: in other words a vision in which there is no room for God, for a Mystery that transcends pure reason, for a moral law of absolute value that is in effect all the time and in every situation."
He's sweating a bit, methinks, because of the accelerating trend to split church from state in the EU, and the increasing reality of "a post-Christian Europe":
Many of the new EU states were among the strongest voices in the unsuccessful effort to add a mention of God or Christianity in the EU constitution, which was effectively mothballed after rejection last year by voters in France and the Netherlands. The EU hopes to restart the ratification process, with some officials setting a target of 2008...

In Greece, the head of the powerful Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, said he would not object to a "velvet separation" between church and state, which would allow the church to retain its tax breaks and other privileges but would eliminate clergy from presiding at official events such as the swearing-in of political leaders...

Anglican clergy in Britain — where the crown is the nominal head of the Church of England — have been steadily dropping the practice of including prayers for the monarch in another small but noticeable crack in the church-state structure, which could come under further strains if Prince Charles takes the throne because of disputes over his divorce and remarriage...

Norway, which is not an EU member but has close economic ties with the bloc, opened hearings in April on whether to separate church and state after 469 years of Lutheranism as its official religion. A government panel recommended the split in January, but it could not happen until at least 2014 because of rules on changing the constitution. Neighboring Sweden ended its "official" Lutheran church in 2000...

"We are witnessing post-Christian Europe taking shape," said Jonathan Bartley, co-director of Ekklesia, a London-based group that examines religious and social trends. "The remaining alliances of religion and governments don't make sense anymore, in many people's eyes, and they are coming apart"...What may emerge in coming decades, experts say, is a greater presence of religious-oriented groups seeking to shape public policies as Europe becomes more culturally and religiously diverse.
Ah, don't sweat it, Pontiff, we don't blame you. Well, at least some of us don't.
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Appealing to Authority re Theism -- Some Thoughts on Antony Flew and Einstein

Long-time "poster boy" for philosophical atheism, Antony Flew, has now become somewhat an object of victory in the hands of misguided theists. I would first say that this interview by Strobel, like Kirk Cameron's article on Einstein, [HT: Ed Brayton] is a transparent attempt to prop up the position of theism (or argue against atheism) by simply appealing to authority.
Not all appeals to authority are wrong, of course, when knowledge is not held. This is especially necessary in areas of philosophical and scientific expertise. But given that Flew displays neither in citing a very basic version of the argument from design -- one so well-known that there is no real need to "prop it up" with some specialist, this seems unreasonable. Contrariwise, the heart of the interview with Flew is about biological complexity, an area in which he is spectacularly unqualified and unathoritative. Now let's consider authorities in that area: I find it quite humorous that those most familiar with the details of biology are most likely, among all scientists, to be atheists. It is well-known that Ph.D. Biologists are more atheistic than professors of physical sciences or social sciences.

Flew makes exactly the opposite argument here -- that the complexity of biology is so astoundingly high compared to the complexity of physics, that we ought to take for granted Einstein's words as a tacit admission that if physics reveals God...how much more so does biology?

I would first point out that Einstein's every word on God has been abused since nearly the day he uttered them. People desperate to validate their faith via "well hey, there's a really smart guy who also believes," have conveniently overlooked the details of the sort of belief that he actually had -- it was not belief in the God of any theism. Einstein was a committed determinist in the vein of Spinoza:
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

-- The quotation above may be Einstein's most familiar statement of his beliefs. These words are frequently quoted, but a citation is seldom given. The quotation can be found in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (The Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Illinois, Third Edition, 1970) pp. 659 - 660. There the source is given as the New York Times, 25 April 1929, p. 60, col. 4. Ronald W. Clark (pp. 413-414) [source]
He might best be described as a Deist, not a true Spinozan pantheist. His comment about "God does not play dice with the universe," was direct confirmation of both of these two things -- although we know now that Einstein was wrong about quantum physics. Einstein was also wrong about the cosmological constant in general relativity -- the universe does extrapolate backwards in time to a singularity. Too often theists overlook the fact that Einstein did make mistakes in science; would they concede, given his mistakes in his own field of expertise, that it is just as plausible, and more so, that he also made mistakes in this field so outside of the possibility of anyone's expertise (whether God exists or not)?

I have to wonder if Einstein were alive today, and knew the progress and powerful evidence for indeterminism on the quantum scale, whether he would maintain his position stubbornly against the tide. I have to believe he would not. But it is clear that Einstein held some antipathy towards militant, intolerant, "bigoted" atheists. It seems to me that he would be quite unlikely, even if shown the evidence for indeterminism and accepting it, to immediately become a sort of Richard Dawkins. His sense of awe and mystery of the universe seems too great.

However, he might admit that there is no good reason to look at the laws and forces of our universe as evidence of any greater Mind or Cause.

Moving on from Einstein, Gary Habermas did an interview with Flew, in which Flew admitting to having come to a worldview aptly described as Deism. From the interview:
HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?

FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.

Now, what kind of response does Biola give this? Well, it dishonestly titles the interview, "Atheist Becomes Theist". This is a blatant lie. Period. From this intial interview, publication, and Biola lie, Flew "became a theist" in the media. In the aftermath of this conclusion, Flew was touted as a sort of victory object for the power of apologetics, and recently, for the power of ID.

Just a few months back, the Media Complaints Division says,
Judge John Jones swallowed this claim despite the many scientists and scholars outside of Christianity who have embraced ID (like British philosopher Antony Flew). They illustrate the obvious: A theory (ID) that makes no appeals to Scriptural authority, but instead bases its arguments on scientific evidence, is a theory that anyone from a deist to Deepak Chopra could embrace.
Well, Disco Institute, sorry to hurt your feelings, but Dr. Flew then says,
I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction. [January 2005]
It was in fact abiogenesis, and not evolution, which led Dr. Flew to believe in something which had to seed the first forms of reproductive life on earth. He believed in some sort of "front-loading", like Krauze, not a guided evolution. It is for this reason Flew pointed out he did not believe in miracles, that evolution was sufficient to explain the diversity and complexity of life on earth...after the first reproducing form:
...the non-interfering God of the people called Deists--such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
Flew admitted that he was ignorant of the scientific literature, and after speaking with Richard Carrier, who prodded Flew to examine it, he made the above confession. Flew does not dismiss the idea of a deity, but obviously admits that there is no need to invoke a deity to explain life's origins. He also holds no belief about an afterlife of any sort. For more, see here.

I agree with Carrier's conclusion [quoting Flew] that,
"I am just too old at the age of nearly 82 to initiate and conduct a major and super-radical controversy about the conceivability of the concept of God as a spirit." This would appear to be his excuse for everything: he won't investigate the evidence because it's too hard. Yet he will declare beliefs in the absence of proper inquiry. Theists would do well to drop the example of Flew. Because his willfully sloppy scholarship can only help to make belief look ridiculous.
Flew put out a new preface to his book, before examining the evidence and the arguments, as he now admits, and calls himself "a fool" for doing, in which he states:
My own commitment then as a philosopher who was also areligious unbeliever was and remains that of Plato’s Socrates: “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.”
Indeed, we must. And this is why Flew calls himself a fool--for declaring a position without seriously scrutinizing it. And I call myself one at times for the same reason. It seems that more recent developments have seen Flew reiterating his Deistic position. One point to bring up to people using both Flew and Einstein is that neither man, possessing Deistic beliefs, denies the common descent of all life via natural evolution. Neither man, possessing Deistic beliefs, denies the Big Bang. Neither man, possessing Deistic beliefs, denies the most basic principles of science, which falsify huge portions of the Bible and render the idea of a Resurrection laughable. Remember, Deism is a God removed from Its Creation, not one which steps in and tinkers and breaks the laws It set up.

In the end, we all must examine the evidence and develop our worldviews based upon it. Using gaps in our own knowledge as a place to build faith is poor theology and philosophy. Einstein used a false position on quantum indeterminacy to maintain his deterministic beliefs. Flew used a false position on the plausibility of abiogenesis to maintain his. In the meanwhile, sloppy agenda-driven people will continue to tout Flew and Einstein as some sort of proof that a god exists and/or that solid evidence exists which can convince very intelligent people that god does -- that faith is almost unnecessary.

The agenda here is clear--a brilliant intellectual was convinced by the evidence for ID, and a brilliant physicist invoked the word "God" when describing the workings of our universe: therefore, God exists! Unfortunately, the truth reads differently -- a brilliant intellectual trusted some authorities' conclusions on the evidence without examining it for himself, and came to a faulty conclusion, which he later refuted after examining the evidence first-hand; a brilliant physicist made remarks which were completely taken out of context.

Don't believe me? Go practice exactly what I'm preaching: read for yourself.
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Friday, December 8, 2006

Falwell Could Learn from The Grinch

From Dr. Seuss:
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
The Grinch figured it out, but Falwell apparently hasn't. To Falwell, and millions of other apparently-retarded Americans, Christmas must come from a store, from the mouths of its clerks, from the logos and ads they use, and the commercialism inherent in it all.

His Liberty Counsel (quite the oxymoron) has published a scathing exposé on an arbitrary list of retailers who are either "naughty" or "nice", depending upon their conformation to the 11th Commandment -- "thou shalt use 'Merry Christmas' in as gratuitous a fashion as possible".

I've been hearing on the Gainesville forums over and over and over how "we" (the Evil Atheist Conspiracy®, of course) want to "take away" the "meaning" of Xmas. Hilarious. People like that have less appreciation of their own values, and less of an ability to apparently maintain them without social validation, than my beautiful dogs.

Perhaps the loss of Wally World just made me bitter, perhaps my festive indulgement in Christmas Holiday art didn't perk me up, and maybe legal clarity didn't uncloud my mind...

...or maybe I'm right: "culture warriors" Jerry Falwell, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are just fu*%tards with baaaa-ing sheep following him around mindlessly. PS: Don't go find out that FoxNews was selling "holiday ornaments" while they were fanning the flames under the asses of their sycophants in the "War on Xmas". See this and this.

(HT: UTI)
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Wednesday, December 6, 2006

The PoE and "God's Glory"

I'll first quote a generic Calvinist so readers can see the variants of theodicy amongst sects of Christians:
Rather, pain and suffering are a means by which his redemptive wisdom, mercy, and justice are manifested to his rational creatures for the benefit of the elect...It doesn't. Rather, it enriches the life of the redeemed...
I'll bullet list some questions, and you can answer Y/N to the numbers that correspond, such that my own "simplistic" misunderstandings can be corrected:
  • So evil --> mercy isn't to God's glory then, but to our experience of God's glory?
  • So the consequences of the Fall are not God's fault because of compatibilism -- that God co-suffered the consequences in the form of Jesus?

1. How can God be blameless in ordaining the Fall?

2. How can God blame us for the consequences of the Fall?

The greater good defense is only designed to answer the first question, not the second.

An answer to the second question depends on your version of action theory; in this case, compatibilism.

The greater good defense is one plank of a broader theodicy.
It seems
In addition, even if he regards the Christian faith as incoherent, that in no way absolves him from discharging his own burden of proof.
I'm still unsure as to how or when I supposedly did this.
It will hardly do for him to say, "Sure, I'm incoherent—but you're incoherent too!"
Where and when did I say or show incoherence, or commit tu quoque?

Another place on this same Calvinist website asserts:
ii) I do regard natural evil as a manifestation of divine judgment. But this ordinarily goes back to the Fall. It isn’t directly punitive with respect to any particular victim. But it is a general manifestation of divine judgment.
Dave Amstrong is a prolific Catholic apologist, and his writings on the PoE are as extensive as any other topic he's addressed:

Christian Replies to the Argument From Evil (Free Will Defense): Is God Malevolent, Weak, or Non-Existent Because of the Existence of Evil and Suffering?
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ124.HTM

Alvin Plantinga's Decisive Refutation of the Atheist Use of the Problem of Evil as a Disproof of God's Existence, Goodness, or Omnipotence (+ Discussion)
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/alvin-plantingas-decisive-refutation.html
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/davearmstrong/116071794487746081/#116977

Critique of Agnostic Ed Babinski's Post: "The Problem of Evil, Alvin Plantinga and Victor Reppert" (the "Emotional" Argument From Evil) (Dave Armstrong vs. Ed Babinski)
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/critique-of-agnostic-ed-babinskis-post.html

Serious Christian Treatments of the Problem of Evil and Breezy Atheist Dismissals of Them Sans Rational Argument (+ Discussion) (Dave Armstrong vs. John W. Loftus)
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/serious-christian-treatments-of.html
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/davearmstrong/116042118212142615/#116612

Some Christian Replies to the Problem of Evil as Set Forth by Atheists (+ Discussion) (Dave Armstrong vs. "drunken tune" and John W. Loftus)
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/some-christian-replies-to-problem-of.html
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/davearmstrong/116046273013664968/#116725

Dialogue #2 With an Atheist on the Problem of Evil (+ Discussion) (Dave Armstrong vs. "drunken tune")
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/dialogue-2-with-atheist-on-problem-of.html
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/davearmstrong/116060670288633022/#116870

Dialogue #3 With an Atheist on the Problem of Evil (Dave Armstrong vs. John W. Loftus)
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/dialogue-3-with-atheist-on-problem-of.html

Can God be Blamed for the Nazi Holocaust? Reflections on the "Problem of Evil" and Human Free Will
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/06/can-god-be-blamed-for-nazi-holocaust.html

Dialogue With an Atheist on the "Problem of Good" and the Nature of Meaningfulness in Atheism (+ Part Two) (The Flip Side of the Problem of Evil Argument Against Christianity)
(Dave Armstrong vs. Mike Hardie)
http://web.archive.org/web/20020810223936/ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ518.HTM +
http://web.archive.org/web/20011119015359/http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ519.HTM

Reasons for Suffering and Encouragement and Hope in the Midst of It: A Biblical Compendium
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/03/reasons-for-suffering-encouragement.html

Comfort and Peace From Scripture
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ188.HTM

Dave's major argument is that Plantinga's free will theodicy "solves" the logical PoE. He has directed most of his posts towards establishing this, and I think he's done as much as anyone can do. I'm not saying (of course) that I think his effort correlates to success in solving this problem, but he has done a great job of attempting to solve it, at least.

Here's my rebuttal, and here are other posts on the topics of PoE.
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Newdow in WND

Michael Newdow's article in the WorldNUTdaily addresses the issues I've been discussing the past few days with respect to church-state separation. I've pasted the full-text below. (HT: Dispatches)

WND's fatuous reporting
Posted: December 2, 2006, 1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Mike Newdow

Recently, WND published two articles concerning my lawsuit challenging the national motto: "God 'erased'? Suit could force city name changes" Nov. 22, and "Judge Moore files brief supporting 'In God We Trust'" Nov. 30. Because the accounts were quite misleading, I feel it is important to provide some clarification.

I'll begin by pointing to WND's view that government has to take one or another position vis-à-vis the existence of God, and that it is "technically impossible" to have "'the government treat everybody's religious views equally.'" If the government stops saying that we trust in God, it is argued, our nation will be espousing an atheistic worldview.

What nonsense! When Congress passes highway bills or makes appropriations for cancer research, it doesn't say God exists. Does WND believe that Congress, in those bills, is promoting an atheistic agenda? Similarly, in the motto and the pledge, the government doesn't say anything about Jesus' divinity. Why doesn't WND interpret that as taking the position that Jesus wasn't the son of God?

The reason is obvious: Those are ridiculous conclusions. In fact, to show just how ridiculous they are, one can apply the same logic in reverse. It can just as forcefully (and fatuously) be argued that because government doesn't DENY "His" existence, it's taking the position that God does exists, and that by failing to specify that Jesus was NOT the son of God, government is saying that he was.

It is not "technically impossible" at all for the government to treat everybody's religious views equally. On the contrary, it's very simple: Government needs only to stay out of the religion business – precisely as the Constitution demands. The problem is that our legislators have been favoring (Christian) monotheism for the last half century, and ending that favoritism appears (to those who have been its beneficiaries) to be "favoring" the atheists.

This appearance, of course, is illusory. No one claimed atheists were being favored from 1794-1864 (when none of our coins had "In God We Trust") or from 1892-1954 (when the Pledge did not contain the "under God" phrase). How could restoring the coins and the Pledge to their original neutral states be "favoring" atheists now?

WND's assertion that "Newdow has admitted that ... [he] ... wants to ... install his own belief system that does not acknowledge God" is similarly misleading. By focusing on the elimination of "acknowledgments" of God's existence, it is implied that it is atheism ("his own belief system") that I seek to have government endorse. But the fact is that if the government adhered to my atheistic views and claimed that God is a myth, I would demand the elimination of that assertion as well. The "belief system" I'm striving to uphold is the one based on equality, not on any religious opinion – including my own. The real question is not why I am fighting for that "belief system" (i.e., equality), but why others are fighting against it.

That I'm for "[b]anning references to God or Christianity in the public sphere" is yet another bogus contention. Let me be clear on this: I want God and Christianity in the public sphere. In fact, if any people ever find government interfering with their rights to enter the public sphere and proclaim what they believe is God's or Jesus' glory, they can count on me for assistance. If any government employee is castigated for bringing a Bible to work, or any child is prohibited from praying in school, please call me up so that I can help put an end to such unconstitutional and abusive governmental activity. But the right of individuals and groups to voice their own religious opinions is very different from the "right" to have the government join them in their endeavors. In fact, that posited "right" is no right at all; it is precisely what the Establishment Clause prohibits. In other words, when it comes to religious issues, that "public sphere" belongs only to the public, not the government. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has written, "The government may not … lend its power to one or the other side in controversies over religious … dogma." Surely the question of the existence of God is such a controversy.

Many individuals who strongly believe in God – such as the 33 named Jewish and Christian clergy who wrote a brief in support of my position when the Pledge case went to the Supreme Court – understand that the constitutional principles underlying this view protect us all. If America in the future has a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or ("God forbid") an atheistic majority, it is the position I'm advocating, not that of my opponents, that will protect the remaining Christians.

It is ironic that the first of the WND articles was written on Nov. 22. That's the day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Kennedy, it may be recalled, was the first Catholic president. His election undoubtedly would have astounded those white, male Protestant Christians who founded our nation, for they lived in an era where anti-Catholic animus was little different from the anti-atheism of today. During his campaign for the presidency, Kennedy addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors, stating, "I strongly support … the guarantees of religious equality provided by the First Amendment; and I ask only that these same guarantees be extended to me." The editors of WND, as they report the news to their readers, might wish to focus on those magnificent guarantees rather than on nonsensical and misleading assertions that divert attention from what is truly at issue.

Mike Newdow currently has cases in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging "In God We Trust" as the nation's motto and "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. He can be contacted via restorethepledge.com.
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Monday, December 4, 2006

The War on Xmas -- Legal Insight

From sarcasm and satire to esquire -- I found a paper (HT: RC) by Perry Dane on Christmas and government displays that is quite consonant with my own views, and explicates the precarious balance between anti-religious secularism and "true" neutral secularism in government endorsement:
When government privileges the so-called secular aspects of Christmas over the religious aspects, or when it detaches the cultural accessories of Christmas from their religious roots, it is, in effect, taking the anti-religious side in the continuing struggle over the meaning of Christmas as a cultural resource. And it is in that sense establishing, not the neutral secularism that is built into our constitutional dispensation, but an anti-religious secularism that is foreign to that dispensation. (p.8, Dane, Perry, "Christmas" (November 2006). Available at SSRN)
His argument is, in short, that using government property to display Xmas trees and Santas, absent their religious context, is deleterious to our establishment-centered Constitutional provisions; the clearest, but least popular, solution is to not use government property to celebrate or endorse any aspect of any holidays. He recognizes that accomodationist positions of embracing pluralism won't work, and would be likely to cause more legal issues than they solve. And he admits that the austerity here isn't attractive, but it is, incontrovertibly, a true legal solution, and perhaps the only workable one.
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NCAA Football Championship

It's old news now that the Gators are going to Glendale, AZ, to play the Buckeyes on Jan. 8th for the BCS win.

If anyone is interested in going, details on tickets are here, and I found a round-trip flight with JetBlue for ~$500/adult (as of now) out of Orlando to Phoenix, 1/5 to 1/9. This was my first attempt to get a figure for airfare, though, and I'm sure better deals are out there. Email me if you're considering going, or if you want to help me procure tickets, then turn around and sell them to me (I really need to get one for my wife, after that it's mutual profit).
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Sunday, December 3, 2006

Worth a Moment's Read

There are many arguments for atheism. It is rare, however, to find a carefully-thought-out argument for atheism along moral grounds. Raymond D. Bradley wrote just one such argument, in an essay entitled, "A Moral Argument for Atheism".

An excerpt from that paper in defining moral objectivism:
We mean a set of moral truths that would remain true no matter what any individual or social group thought or desired. The notion of objective morality is antithetical to all forms of moral subjectivism. It holds, first, that we have moral beliefs that are either true or false; that they are not mere expressions of emotion, akin to sighs of pleasure or pain. It holds, secondly, that the truth or falsity of our moral judgments is a function of whether or not the objects of moral appraisal, agents and their actions, have the moral properties that we ascribe to them; that their truth or falsity is not merely a function of the thoughts, feelings, or attitudes of individuals or the conventions of society. And it holds, thirdly, that there may well be moral truths still awaiting our discovery, through revelation (on the theist's account) or through reason and experience--together, perhaps, with our changing biology--(on my account).
Something I have no doubts of is that morality must be approached objectively if one is to use reason to discuss moral truths -- ie if one assumes that moral facts exist. I have tried to explain how my own view of morality can be grounded in simple truths about human survival, socialization, and empathy. In short, if humans exist, and if there are a range of options about how they might behave towards one another, then cooperative, kind behavior is one of those options. The reason it is good, I argue, is that it leads to more pleasure, happiness, less pain, longer lifespan, health, wealth...etc. Moral behavior, derivable from a simple set of virtues, can be shown to produce these effects. If we agree that these effects are good, then you now know what is good, and if you know what is good, you ought to do good for the sake of good itself. This is certainly a consequentialist view, but such a simple precept seems quite compatible with a standalone deontological virtue theory.

All that said, I will gladly admit that I have more reading to do and need to strengthen my arguments for objective morality. But there is some part of me that questions, still, whether morality is a metaphysically ultimate, absolute and normative.

Although I am quite sure that reason/logic are metaphysically ultimate and necessary entities, and therefore not contingent upon any other conditions or truths, I am not sure that the same applies to ethics. This is something I've been thinking about for some time, but I haven't done enough reading on to feel confident either way. I am not a moral relativist, per se, but I do not know if the same sort of transcendent status can be applied to morality as can be applied to logical and mathematical truths.

Bradley argued against Dr. Paul Chamberlain in a debate about the question, "Is Objective Morality Possible Without God?" Bradley mentioned this debate in reference [8] of the paper above, and an overview of the debate was written up in The Peak, the student newspaper at SFU. Check it out.
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Gators Win the 2006 NCAA Basketball and Football Championships?

We'll find out.

G
o Gators
!!!!

Boy, this has been a good week :)
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Saturday, December 2, 2006

Does Religion Correlate to Spousal Abuse?

I am not with Dawkins in insisting that all religious teaching to children is akin to child abuse. That said, Austin Cline's recent article (thanks, Ed) about the parallels in the relationship between God and believer and the relationship between spouse abuser and spouse victim presents some solid logical arguments. I have always thought it obvious that the only religions which have survived are those which have successfully exploited human psychology and sociology to the max, following the memetic hypothesis of Dawkins. If a religion does not exploit fear, dependency, self-deprecation, etc., then it will not exist for long -- because people will instead learn to be independent, value themselves, place hope in tangiable goals...

Read it:
God as Abuser: Similarities Between the Christian God and Abusive Spouses
From Austin Cline
  • God and Spousal Abuse:
It’s common for Christians to compare the relationship between humanity and God to that between husband and wife. God is the “man” of the house to whom humanity owes obedience, respect, and honor. Usually this relationship is portrayed as one of love, but in far too many ways, God is more like an abusive spouse who only knows how to love through intimidation and violence. A review of classic signs and symptoms of spousal abuse reveals how abusive the “relationship” people have with God is.
  • Victims are Afraid of the Abuser:
Abusers instill fear in their spouses; believers are instructed to fear God. Abusers are unpredictable and given to dramatic mood swings; God is depicted as alternating between love and violence. Abused spouses avoid topics which set off the abuser; believers avoid thinking about certain things to avoid angering God. Abusers make one feel like there is no way to escape a relationship; believers are told that there is no way to escape God’s wrath and eventual punishment.
  • Abusers Use of Threats and Intimidation to Force Compliance:
Violence is a primary means by which abusers communicate, even with their spouses whom they are supposed to love. Abusers aren’t just violent towards their spouses — they also use violence against objects, pets, and other things to instill more fear and to force compliance with their wishes. God is portrayed as using violence to force people to comply with certain rules and Hell is the ultimate threat of violence. God might even punish an entire nation for the transgressions of a few members.
  • Abusers Withholds Resources from Victims:
In order to exercise greater control over a victim, abusers will withhold important resources in order to make the victim more dependent. Resources used like this include money, credit cards, access to transportation, medications, or even food. God is also depicted as exercising control over people by controlling their resources — if people are insufficiently obedient, for example, God may cause crops to fail or water to turn bad. The basic necessities of living are conditioned on obeying God.
  • Abusers Instill Feelings of Inadequacy in Victims:
A further means of exercising control over a victim is instilling feelings of inadequacy in them. By getting them to feel worthless, helpless, and unable to do anything right, they will lack the self-confidence necessary to stand up to the abuser and resist the abuse. Believers are taught that they are depraved sinners, unable to do anything right and unable to have good, decent, or moral lives independent of God. Everything good that a believer achieves is due to God, not their own efforts.
  • Victims Feel they Deserve to be Punished by Abusers:
Part of the process of encouraging the victim to feel inadequate involves getting them to feel that they really do deserve the abuse they are suffering. If the abuser is justified in punishing the victim, then the victim can hardly complain, can she? God is also described as being justified in punishing humanity — all people are so sinful and depraved that they deserve an eternity in hell (created by God). Their only hope is that God will take pity on them and save them.
  • Victims are Not Trusted by Abusers:
Another part of the process of making the victim feel inadequate is ensuring that they know how little the abuser trusts them. The victim is not trusted to make her own decisions, dress herself, buy things on her own, or anything else. She is also isolated from her family so that she can’t find help. God, too, is depicted as treating people as if they were unable to do anything right or make their own decisions (like on moral issues, for example).
  • Emotional Dependency of the Abuser on the Victim:
Although abusers encourage victims to feel inadequate, it is the abuser who really has problems with self-confidence. Abusers encourage emotional dependency because they are emotionally dependent themselves — this produces extreme jealousy and controlling behavior. God, too, is depicted as dependent upon human worship and love. God is usually described as jealous and unable to handle it when people turn away. God is all-powerful, but unable to prevent the smallest problems.
  • Blaming the Victim for the Abuser’s Actions:
Victims are typically made to feel responsible for all of an abuser’s actions, not just deserving of the punishments inflicted. Thus victims are told that it’s their fault when an abuser gets angry, feels suicidal, or indeed when anything at all goes wrong. Humanity is also blamed for everything that goes wrong — although God created humanity and can stop any unwanted actions, all responsibility for all evil in the world is laid entirely at the feet of human beings.
  • Why Do Abused People Stay With Their Abusers?:
Why do women stay with violent, abusive spouses? Why don’t they just pack up and leave, making a new life for themselves elsewhere and with people who actually respect and honor them as equal, independent human beings? The signs of abuse described above should help in answering these questions: women are so emotionally and psychologically beaten down that they lack the mental strength to do what is necessary. They don’t have enough confidence to believe that they can make it without the man who keeps telling them that only he could possibly love such an ugly and worthless person such as they.

Perhaps some insight on this can be gained by rephrasing the question and asking why people don’t abandon the emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship they are expected to develop with God? The existence of God isn’t relevant here — what matters is how people are taught to perceive themselves, their world, and what will happen to them if they make the mistake of trying to leave the relationship in order to make a better life for themselves elsewhere.

Women who are abused are told that they can’t make it on their own and if they try, their spouse will come after them to punish or even kill them. Believers are told that they can’t accomplish anything of value without God, that they are so worthless that only because God is infinitely loving does he love them at all; if they turn their backs on God, they will be punished for all eternity in hell. The sort of “love” which God has for humanity is the “love” of an abuser who threatens, attacks, and commits violence in order to get his own way.

Religions like Christianity are abusive insofar as they encourage people to feel inadequate, worthless, dependent, and deserving of harsh punishment. Such religions are abusive insofar as they teach people to accept the existence of a god which, if human, would have long ago been shut away in prison for all his immoral and violent behavior.
Wow. Can anyone honestly deny how clear those parallels are? I challenge any Christian to show how these comparisons are not accurate.

PS: Check out Austin Cline's amazing artwork in the War on Xmas and Theocracy.
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Scary Amoral Conservatism

My title is not just rhetoric. Read this recent article by Amy Barath from a right-wing rag:

...It is the fear of God which prevents us from dousing fellow citizens with kerosene and lighting them ablaze. It is the fear of God which prevents us from shooting a disabled man in his wheelchair and then pushing him in to the sea. It is the fear of God which commands us to choose right over wrong...

It is the responsibility of the Conservatives to protect the concept of God as the golden thread which holds our Republic together in the way it was intended as set forth by our founding fathers. Although we have become tired of the tantrums from the Left, we must muster our energy, fight this one and win. If we do not, if we allow the Left to erase the meaning of God from our memories and disallow us to teach the future generations of this country the importance of fearing God, one day we will be strolling down Main Steet whistling Dixie when a member of the Anti-Whistling Dixie Brigade stops us, throws acid in our faces and then sets as ablaze. [emphasis mine]
Yikes! I hope to never meet this Amy Barath on the street when she's having a bad day, or wrestling with doubts about God. People like Amy apparently cannot be swayed by rational argument to be good to others out of of self-interest: reciprocity and justice cannot exist if we all do not agree to treat each other fairly and well. She's scary.

What is it about rational arguments for moral behavior that these kinds of people don't get? They're think humans are like dumb animals who need to be broken by fear and caged by religious mandate to keep from killing one another (and, in her mind, immolating each other). They seem to deny that 99% of people raised in loving homes who are educated and encouraged go on to lead nonviolent, healthy, productive, normal lives, with or without religion. In denying the effects of modernism, and the shedding of religion, Amy snubs secular humanistic values and the attendant fruits thereof. The concepts of positive reinforcement and behavior modification [which I use to train two beautiful and gentle giant animals], with empirically-established facts, apparently don't exist in her tiny wingnut brain.

Studies have shown that atheism correlates to lower rates of imprisonment, and to healthier societal indicators (such as abortion rates, teen pregnancy rates, murder rates...). Free societies [versus communist ones] like Sweden, Germany and Japan have very little "fear of God" and no human torches. Why is that, Amy? Why aren't more wheelchair-bound citizens of those countries shot and pushed into bodies of water? I have to wonder how Amy responds to those facts, or if she can even process them...

I'm really not trying to go overboard with the rhetoric when I say people like her honestly frighten me. It is possible that people like her are born with no empathy, or that they have been conditioned to lose it. And those people are dangerous.
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And So It Begins...

The FFRF has written the Dixie County Commissioners and asked them to remove the display, informing them of the legal potential in this case. They are also soliciting plaintiffs from the area -- this news release from the FFRF was carried in a NC-based newswire service yesterday. Keep tuned, more to come, I'm sure.

http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20061201120201768

Yet Another Court House Ten Commandments Monument

Friday, December 01 2006 @ 12:02 PM EST

State/Church Watchdog Groups Seeks Plaintiffs to Sue Over Dixie County Decalog

FFRF via BBSNews 2006-12-01 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog group, is looking for Dixie County residents willing to join a lawsuit challenging the placement of a 6-ton monument of the Ten Commandments on the steps of the Dixie County Courthouse last week.

The Foundation, an association with nearly 8,000 mostly atheist and agnostic members nationwide, has a successful track record in suing over the "faith-based initiative." This fall, its litigation got the Federal Bureau of Prisons to back down from plans to open "single faith" ministry pods in federal penitentiaries.

The Foundation sent a formal request today to the Dixie County Board of Commissioners asking it to remove the monument. Spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor noted that the county is flouting well-established law, including a ruling by the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta in the notorious Judge Roy Moore case. Moore was ordered to remove a Ten Commandments monument placed in the Alabama state courthouse. The county's action also violates last year's decision by the Supreme Court ruling that Kentucky officials violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in placing a Ten Commandments display in a courthouse.

"This display is far more visible, unavoidable and intrusive than the one deemed unconstitutional in the Kentucky case," Gaylor said.

The fact that the granite monument depicting an open bible was paid for privately does not mitigate the violation, Gaylor said, pointing to a 1980 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Stone v. Graham case, which said government display of donated Ten Commandment posters was an impermissible endorsement.

"The First Commandment alone makes it obvious why the Ten Commandments may not be posted by government bodies. Dixie County has no business telling citizens which god they must have, how many gods they must have, or that they must have any god at all!"Gaylor said.

Making the violation even more egregious is the inscription at the base admonishing citizens to "Love God and keep his commandments."

The Foundation has been contacted by many of its Florida membership. "We plan to sue, but we do need at least one local plaintiff who lives in Dixie County or who has very regular business at the courthouse," Gaylor said.

Anyone potentially interested in being a plaintiff is asked to contact Gaylor at info@ffrf.org, 608/256-8900, or may write FFRF, Inc., at PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701.
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Friday, December 1, 2006

Mount Soledad Cross Saga Continues...

Remember the action taken by Bush to prevent the Mount Soledad Cross from being taken down?

An appellate court upheld the law (HR 5683) on church-state grounds [ie they didn't find that it violated the Est Clause]. But, there are outstanding motions challenging the eminent domain basis of the law, independent of how it impinges upon the 1st Amendment. (HT: RC)

These sorts of things are such a waste of time and money. Pitiful.
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Good Stuff

Uberkuh brings us Ehrman on Colbert about Misquoting Jesus.

Daniel Dennett has now reviewed (.pdf) Dawkins' The God Delusion. Also see here for Orac's fisking of the claim that Dawkins has advocated eugenics. Here is some TO stuff on eugenics as an argument against evolution. (HT: Ed Brayton)
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Monday, November 27, 2006

COTG #54

The 54th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at Hellbound Alleee's.

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Lots of Hate Groups Around G'Ville

I've been to places like Putnam County, and so I figured there would be a few dumb hicks putting on the white sheets around here...but man, there are a lot of hate groups in this part of the state...within 1 hour's drive of Gainesville 35 out of the state's total 50!:

HT: PZ
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Feeling Festive this Xmas Season

Is using "X", from the Greek upper-case chi, "taking the 'Christ' out of 'Christmas'?" Boy, I hope not. After all, the chi-rho was how early Xians identified themselves. So, in this picture, courtesy Christmas Jesus Dress-up, from Normal Bob Smith, I made sure to leave the Christ in Christmas!

I've already heard the first shots in the war on Xmas...and I heard some Xmas carols, too:
GOD REST YE, UNITARIANS
by Christopher Raible

God rest ye, Unitarians, let nothing you dismay;
Remember there's no evidence
There was a Christmas Day;
When Christ was born is just not known,
No matter what they say,

O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact,
Glad tidings of reason and fact.

Our current Christmas customs come
From Persia and from Greece,
From solstice celebrations of the ancient Middle East.
This whole darn Christmas spiel is just
Another pagan feast,

O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact,
Glad tidings of reason and fact.

There was no star of Bethlehem,
There was no angels' song;
There couldn't have been wise men
For the trip would take too long.
The stories in the Bible are historically wrong,

O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact,
Glad tidings of reason and fact.

SOY TO THE WORLD (Joy to the World)
by Ronald Crowe

Soy to the world, legume is come:
Let earth receive her bean.
Let every gut prepare it room
Let stomach and colon sing,
Let stomach and colon sing,
Let stomach and stomach and colon sing.

Soy to the earth, the tofu reigns
Let men, their ploughs employ;
while sun and rain
grow beans on hill and plain
our bowels sound their joy,
our bowels sound their joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.


ANT HILLS I HAVE SEEN QUITE HIGH (Angels We Have Heard on High)
by Ronald Crowe

Ant hills I have seen quite high
scattered over my own front yard.
when they bite me I do cry:
Nature, why are you so hard?

Glo--o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o, Glo-o-o-o-oria,
Please bring me the Benedryl!

WRECK THE HALLS (Deck the Halls)
by Ronald Crowe

Wreck the halls, the walls, and ceilings
Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la
Crashing sounds are so appealing
Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la

Dust clouds rise as bricks go flying
Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la
What joy to watch old buildings dying
Fa-la-la-la-la--la-la-la-la.

Wrecking balls are fun by golly:
Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la.
Smashing things makes us feel jolly:
tra-la-la-la-la--la--la--la-la.

Don we now safety apparel:
Fa-la-la---la-la-la-la
Bring TNT in the old wheel barrow
Fa--la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la.

GREAT LIES WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH
by Ronald Crowe

Great lies we have heard on high
surely of a right-wing strain.
And the sheep baa in reply
happy to be shorn again.

Screwed ew-ew-ew-ew ewed, ew-ew-ew-ew ewed,
ew-ew-ew-ewed again, by right wingus Georgy-O.

Shepherd, why this jubilee,
Why these songs of happy cheer,
when our treasury is bare
and our outlook is quite drear?

Screwed ew-ew-ew-ew--ewed, ew-ew-ew-ew--ewed,
ew-ew-ew-ewed again, by right wingus Georgy-O.

WE THREE KINGS
by Ronald Crowe

We three kings of Orient are,
loaded with oil we traverse afar--
prices soaring, Yankees boiling
oh how we sympathize.

Oh--Oh, western blunder western blight,
Oil's the star of eastern night,
U.S. use is still increasing--
prices rise quite out of sight.

Oil was found on Bethlehem's plain,
in Saudi, Iraq, Iran and Bahrain.
King forever, ceasing never over us all to reign. .....

Oh--Oh, western blunder western blight,
Oil's the star of the Eastern night,
U.S. use is still increasing;
prices rise quite out of sight

On oil we're hooked--its bitter perfume
Casts o'er our lives a gathering gloom:
Paying, sighing, spending, crying--
upwards gas prices zoom.

Oh--Oh, western blunder western blight,
Oil's the star of the Eastern night,
U.S. use is still increasing;
prices rise quite out of sight
Perhaps a little too political for my taste, and not atheological enough. Maybe I should write some...??
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How to Talk to Each Other

I'm a pretty young fellow. That said, I think I have a few things figured out pretty well, although I'm still open to persuasion via argument. That is why I wanted to pass along the following two resources -- because I have learned from theists, and I know they have learned from me:
I spend a great deal of my time in serious conversation/debate with theists, and these guidelines are quite essential for productive and progressive communication.
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Friday, November 24, 2006

On the Heels of Jesus Camp: What Is Becky Fisher Doing Now?

First check out the NYT note about this peer-reviewed article in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging (v148 i1 p67) on speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, and this commentary at world-science.net.

Second, have you heard of "Jesus Camp" yet? If not, you must be living under a rock. I've placed more resources on the documentary below, but I'm not going to retread that territory with my own (predictable) thoughts on it:
Now that you are have at least a passing familiarity with Jesus Camp, want to see some follow-up? Don't be optimistic. If you haven't eaten your breakfast yet, you may want to do so before reading this article in The Guardian (UK). Note it's filed under their "health" section...think "mental health". It follows Becky Fisher, leader of the program which Jesus Camp documents, to a new "Extreme Prophetic Conference" in MO, where we see her up to the same ol', same ol' antics: brainwashing children.

Here's the printer-friendly version (all on one page, no ads). I have the full-text below.
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Kindergarten of Christ
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 18/11/2006

The American evangelical organisation Kids in Ministry trains children as young as five in the gifts of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues. Mick Brown attended its Extreme Prophetic Conference in Missouri

Audio: interview with Mick Brown

Sound & vision: Christ camp

At 9pm – a time when most of the children might have been expected to be in bed – the atmosphere in the Christ Triumphant Church was approaching fever-pitch. On stage, a teenage Christian rock band called Signs and Wonders was playing something sweet and exultantly hypnotic.

(image 1) caption -- Keep the faith: children as young as five are trained to use their 'gifts'

Some of the children were dancing, their bodies writhing and twisting, their arms flailing in the air, perspiration on their foreheads. Some had fallen to the ground, 'slain in the spirit', as the phrase has it, and were now crouching and kneeling in prayer, while the grown-ups moved among them laying on hands, some speaking in tongues.

Ruth, who is eight years old, was sobbing quietly. Earlier that day she had been one of those to come forward during the 'prophetic dance' session, when Pastor Becky Fischer asked if anybody had heard the word of God and had something to impart.

Ruth had stood up and addressed the gathering of perhaps 150 children and half as many adults, seated in neat, attentive rows: 'Is there a boy in here named Alex, and a girl in here named Abi?' Two children had risen in different parts of the room.

Ruth had addressed each of them in a clear, unwavering voice. 'I saw, like, Abigail was going to bring people back to Jesus in China. And you, Alex, I saw that you were going to be a missionary in India.'

Afterwards, I had asked Ruth what made her say these things. 'When I was dancing,' she said, 'I just heard "Abigail and Alex, Abigail and Alex" come into my mind. And then a voice told me they were going to be missionaries.' She had never met Abigail and Alex before.

And where did she think the voice came from? Ruth looked at me, as if to say, isn't it obvious? 'God,' she said.

The numberplates on the cars and camper-vans parked outside the Christ Triumphant Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri, suggested that some families had travelled hundreds of miles to attend what was billed as 'The Extreme Prophetic Conference for Kids'.

The event was hosted by an evangelical organisation called Kids in Ministry, founded by Pastor Fischer. Kids in Ministry describes its aims as to promote a vision of 'how God sees children as His partners in ministry worldwide'; with the purpose of equipping children 'to do the work of ministry and release them in their giftings and callings'.

What this means, in simple terms, is training child-ren, some as young as five, to use the 'gifts' of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues more commonly associated with Old Testament prophets and Jesus Christ Himself.

It is estimated that there are up to 70 million evangelical Christians in America, of whom about a third would describe themselves as Charismatics – which is to say, emphasising a belief in 'charismata', or the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, including healing, speaking in tongues (or glossolalia, as it is more properly known) and a belief in prophecy, the ability to communicate directly with and to 'channel' the word of God.

A heavy-set woman with a helmet of teased and tinted blond hair, and a cheerfully purposeful demeanour, Fischer, 55, grew up in a Pentacostalist family in North Dakota. Both her father and grandfather were ministers and as a child, she told me, she was always 'hungry for the things of God'.

Her early life was spent in business. She managed a motel and a country music radio station, where she would do her best to 'weed out the really ungodly songs, even if they were top 40. Things like Tight Fittin' Jeans by Conway Twitty – we wouldn't play that.'

For 13 years she managed her own sign company, called – inevitably – Signs and Wonders. At the same time she began working in children's ministry, first in a local church, and then in an organisation called MorningStar. It was there, Fischer told me, that she 'really got educated in the prophetic', and in the mission of nurturing 'prophetic gifts' among children. She travelled to Tanzania and South Africa as a missionary, and in 2001 returned to North Dakota and founded Kids in Ministry.

Central to the evangelical movement is a literal belief in the prophecies of the Book of Revelation pertaining to the apocalypse, or 'End Time', and the Second Coming of Christ. This, it is believed, will be heralded by chaos and warfare, but also by a proliferation of signs and wonders and the emergence of a new generation of prophets and apostles, heralding a great Christian revival.

Children, Fischer told me, are 'part of God's End Time army', as capable as adults of operating in the 'gifts of the Spirit', including preaching the Gospel, laying hands on the sick, raising the dead and speaking in tongues.

She cited the biblical book Acts, 2:17: 'In my last days I will pour out my spirit and your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall see dreams.'

Fischer allowed that not many people took this to apply to children as young as five. But children, she said, are 'naturally in touch with the supernatural. You have to remember this is a relatively new phenomenon.

"When people start hearing that children are prophesying and preaching they get goosebumps. But this is happening across the face of the earth. I've got a friend in Tanzania who runs a school where children are healing the sick and casting out devils.'

(image 2) caption -- Child's play: many of the students speak in tongues

There was not, it has to be said, much evidence of healing the sick or casting out devils to be seen at Christ Triumphant, but what was on display was remarkable enough. Over the course of three days, the conference offered a series of structured courses in 'prophetic art' ('reveals the truth of God'), 'prophetic dance' ('You're dancing with the Lord…') and 'prophetic music' – all designed to channel messages from God.

The climax of each session would be the moment when Fischer would ask children to come forward to prophesy. There was always a sense of anticipation when this occurred. On the first night, a dozen or so children stepped forward.

'You in the green shirt…' A boy of about 10 with a crew-cut pointed to a middle-aged woman in the audience. 'God told me that at some time you've been broken, and you've never really got over it. But God says He's going to build you back up, and don't think about your past, think about your future.' The woman called back, 'Right on!'

Then a boy named Levi spoke. 'God told me there's someone here and your hands are really on fire. God has something for you. Your hands are really hot, sweating almost.'

A young girl raised her hand. 'Hey, Chelsea!' Levi said. 'God just told me there's heat in your hands, and if you just keep studying the word and chasing after God, every day there's going to be heat in your hands, and every time you touch somebody they will be healed.' There was a round of whoops, yeahs and applause.

'You are not a normal generation,' Fischer told the congregation. 'When they say history-maker, that is you. And our enemy, who is also God's enemy, is going to do anything he can to destroy the plan that God has for your life; he is going to try to destroy you. And if you don't make the decision to serve God, it'll be too late.'

Becky Fischer's mission has not passed without controversy. Shortly before my visit to the Extreme Prophetic Conference, a documentary about her work called Jesus Camp had received its first screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

The film follows the course of a 'Kids on Fire' summer camp organised by Kids in Ministry. It shows children praying in front of a cardboard cut-out of George Bush, and at one point Fischer seems to equate the preparation she is giving her young charges with the training of Islamist terrorists.

'I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as young people are to the cause of Islam,' she says. 'I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel.'

These pronouncements had led to allegations that Fischer was brainwashing children and 'raising up an army of Christian terrorists'. When I raised this with Fischer, she insisted she had been misinterpreted. The children were not praying to Bush, she told me, but praying for him – as they would for whoever happened to be President. The talk of 'raising an army for Christ' and of children 'laying down their lives' was merely metaphor, of the sort commonly found in scripture.

To her congregation at least, she remained defiant. 'We've got the liberals quite stirred up,' she announced one morning, to loud cheers. 'Some people think I'm a nut and dangerous. Well, they ain't seen nothing yet.'

But it was evident, too, that the criticisms had left their mark. There were no cardboard cut-outs of Bush to be seen at the conference, and in the course of one address Fischer went out of her way to emphasise that the main weapon in the Christian 'armoury' was love.

'Islam wants to take over the world, and so does Christianity. But we take it by love, by compassion, We take it by tenderness.'

What Jesus Camp, and the reaction to it, does show is just how divided America is on the question of religion. But while liberal America perceives the Christian right and its burgeoning political influence as a threat to individual freedoms, reason and common sense, what I sensed among the gathering at the Christ Triumphant was rather a defensiveness – almost a sense of beleaguerment.

Like Christians in Ancient Rome, they saw themselves as the victims if not exactly of persecution then certainly of a 'conspiracy' by the media, Hollywood and the forces of secular liberalism to attack and undermine their faith.

'I've been accused of brainwashing these children,' Fischer said, 'but they're brainwashing our kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can't turn on TV without seeing witchcraft, perversion, homosexuality, jumping in and out of bed with anybody and everybody. It might be common behaviour, but it's not normal.' You want to screw up a kid's life, Fischer said, send them to university. 'They'll turn his head so inside out and upside down he won't even know which end he's supposed to wipe.'

The next morning, there was an appearance by a guest speaker named Stacey Campbell, well-known in Charismatic circles for her work with children.

A small, energetic woman in her forties, she began by asking for the Lord's intervention over the matter of the pornographer Larry Flynt opening a Hustler boutique in Nashville – 'Because if he can take Nashville, he can take America…'

I wondered how many of the eight-year-olds in the congregation had heard of Larry Flynt or knew what pornography was.

'There is a living Devil, and he is after your generation,' Campbell went on, recounting a story about seven-year-olds being sold into prostitution in Thailand. 'The Devil knows about your generation. He wants to steal from you and kill you. But God knows about you, too.'

Then she called a boy named Jordan to the stage and told him that she had been praying for him and had had a vision that he would become 'a leader for his generation. I could see you standing in front of crowds of people and leading many, many to righteousness.' The audience whooped their approval, as Jordan blushed and returned to his seat.

At the end of her talk there was a prayer session. Campbell knelt beside a young girl who was praying with her eyes tightly closed, and whispered in her ear. 'I see that God is going to start talking to you in dreams.'

She moved to another child. 'Nolan,' she asked him, 'do you ever hear God talk to you?' A mixture of confusion and alarm flickered in Nolan's eyes until, at length, he shook his head. 'No.'

That afternoon, the children divided into groups for lessons in 'prophetic' painting, music and dance. The dance class was conducted in the main hall by Carol Koch, one of the pastors of Christ Triumphant, and afterwards people began to gather there for Fischer's talk on interpreting prophetic symbols and colours.

They were greeted by the sight of a small child lying on the floor, twitching and groaning. It was Ruth, the eight-year-old whom I had noticed prophesying the day before.

'Don't worry about her,' Fischer said. 'They had a really sweet moment in the dance class today and she was touched by God.'

She carefully stepped around the prostrate body and attempted to press on with her talk, then gestured to Koch. 'She's kind of distracting.' Ruth's father came out of the audience, picked up his child and carried her off to a side room.

Fischer was talking about interpreting prophetic visions of animals. Bat: witchcraft – bad. Beaver: industrious, diligent – good. The children were told to 'let God speak to you', and then invited to give prophecy. Ruth had apparently recovered and now came forward and pointed to another girl in the audience: 'I saw a deer, lying down. I think it means you're nice and loyal.'

A boy of about nine stepped off the stage and walked directly to a girl in the audience and pointed at her: 'God has told me that if you keep on praying every day, you will blow people's brains out.' There was a moment's hesitation – could he mean? No, surely not – and then a thunderous round of applause.

The more I watched the children giving prophecy, the more I wondered about what it could mean. Some of the messages seemed unerring in their specificity; some so vague they could have meant anything, to anybody; and some, simply the first things that came into the children's heads. For Fischer and Koch it was 'the word of God'.

Others might have called it simply intuition, or perhaps, if you had a mind for such things, the cultivation of nascent clairvoyant gifts.

Others still, of course, would have dismissed the pronouncements as figments of the imagination, the fruits of expectation placed on the children by what psychologists would call the 'set and setting' – the music, the prayers, the emotional catharsis, the dangling carrot of approval and applause when a message or pronouncement seemed to hit home.

Koch was alive to the possibility that some of the children at least might have been simply making it up. 'You'll get a few, when they share something, they're saying it to get attention,' she told me, 'because they do get a lot of attention when they say something; people are… wow!

But one thing I like about kids is that, for the most part, their response is genuine. I always tell them, you don't have to say anything, and don't say ever anything that's not true. I tell my own daughter, I'm more proud of you for not giving prophecy when you don't feel anything, than when you give one because you feel like you have to.'

These were early days, Fischer said. Eighty per cent of children's prophecy was comprised of what I had been watching unfold over the last two days: messages of comfort, inspiration and uplift. 'But if these children continue this as they grow into their twenties and thirties, they will begin to prophesy at very high levels.

At that point they will prophesy national events, international events, things for their church, speaking to political issues. I know of people who are known among prophetic circles for their accuracy in prophecy for world events who have private audiences with the President.'

For some reason, I did not find this reassuring.

On her website, Fischer publishes what she claims is prophecy from children, speaking spontaneously during prayer at a church in Tulsa, Oklahama, in 1998, supposedly foretelling the events of September 11, 2001, a full three years before they occurred.

One example reads: 'Islamic group, the chief guy in the Islamic group of terrorist, not pacifists but destroyers, CIA reveal, Islamic group, blinders remove, CIA, you see, reveal, borders, border patrols, Canada, raids, search, all USA borders, patrol, search, get ready, see, reveal, American 757/767, get off, back to the gate, you're grounded… Sadaam, underground in Babylon, blueprints, drawings, plans, plagues, viruses, God disgusted by terrorists, but His Hands are tied, it's up to us to pray, wake up from your slumber, you'll be held accountable…'

Even more unsettling to the outsider was the mood of high emotion in which the prayer sessions invariably ended – the weeping and sobbing, the young bodies littering the floor, 'slain in the spirit', the mood of abandon and catharsis.

When I asked one young girl why she had been crying she replied that it was 'because I was happy to be in the presence of God'. And what did it feel like, I asked, to be in the presence of God? 'It feels awesome,' she said. 'God,' a boy standing next to her said, 'is so powerful it's hard not to cry.'

Kids in Ministry has outreach programmes in Africa and India, but not yet in Britain. However, the idea of instructing children 'in the prophetic' has a growing currency among the Charismatic community in this country.

Heather Thompson is the director of Powerpack Ministries, which produces teaching resources and advises Charismatic churches on ministering to children, and runs child-ren's groups at large evangelical events such as Spring Harvest and Faith Camp.

'We are seeing children filled with the Holy Spirit, praying for one another, and giving word of knowledge,' Thompson told me. 'We wouldn't feel we'd done a good job unless we were seeing these things happening.'

Graham Richardson, an associate pastor at the Hemel Hempstead Community Church in Hertfordshire, told me that children among his congregation were encouraged to talk about any prophetic experiences they might feel during prayers.

'To me, it's what I call low-key prophecy. It's encouragement, edification. But we believe that children have just as much access to hear from the Lord as we do.'

The Rev Chris Hand is an authority on the Charismatic movement. The pastor of a Baptist church in Derbyshire and editor of the Christian magazine Today's Contender, Hand is a former Charismatic who left the movement some 12 years ago, unable to find any Biblical justification for its prophetic claims.

'My feeling is these things are not from God,' he told me. 'It's more the grey area of psychic activity that the Bible calls mediumship and forbids.'

The emotional hysteria generated in Charismatic gatherings was also, Hand told me, 'alien to the Christian faith'; and, he thought, 'particularly questionable and at times dangerous' where children were involved. 'These kinds of experiences have immense potential to deceive both the children themselves and the adults who encourage them. For most of these children, they'll look back in 10 years' time and wonder what on earth it was all about.'

Hand is the father of two children, aged five and eight, whom he is trying to raise in the Christian faith, he told me, 'and I would not let them come within a million miles of Kids in Ministry'.

I had recognised Levi from the Jesus Camp film and was not surprised to see him at Lee's Summit. Tall, skinny and bright-eyed, he wore his hair cropped with a long ponytail at the back. Every T-shirt he wore was branded with the name of Jesus. Of all the children, Levi had a particular air of maturity and authority.

Whenever Fischer called for those who had the word of God upon them, Levi would be among the first to step forward – a preacher in the making, with a commanding style of address that made people sit up and pay attention. Earlier that day, Levi had taken to the stage with the message that God had told him there were people here who were, 'like, really depressed, and God said be released today! When you go home, it'll be different! You'll be getting phone calls from family members telling you they're sorry, and your life is going to be changed! Your financial problems are going to be released… Stand up if that's you!'

A number of people rose from their seats, their hands in the air.

'Pray over them, Levi!' Fischer called.

Levi's voice rose in an excited incantation. 'I release this on them, God, that the oppression that Satan has put on them to keep them from your calling, just take it off of them now. And when you get home there'll be some phone calls on your answering-machines.'

Levi is 13, and had come to the conference with his younger brother, Luke, and his mother, Tracey. They were members of a Charismatic church in St Robert, Missouri, which taught the prophetic.

Attending the conference, Tracey said, was a way to encourage Luke and Levi in the practice. 'And it's like an encouragement to them to see other children doing this and realise it's not some weird fringe thing that our church does, that it's a normal part of the culture.'

Levi, she told me, was 'just an open vessel that God can work through. The spirit of the Lord has found a home in him, I think.'

I asked Levi, how did he hear the voice of God? God, he said, 'doesn't really speak to me in a voice. I hear Him as a thought.'

And how did he know it was God? 'Whenever a thought comes there are three things that come at you. There's your own mind; then it might be Satan trying to speak to you – because he doesn't want you to speak these things from God. But you just know when it's God. You just get this great feeling – like, yes! That's it!'

When he was 10, Levi said, God had told him he was going to be a missionary in India. 'But you can't just go to India and say you want to be a missionary. So I'm going to go there to be a doctor, and then through that I'm going to tell the people about the Lord.' He planned to attend college there. 'That way I can be there as quickly as possible.'

Like many of the children at the conference, Levi and his brother were home-schooled. In 2001 a US Census Bureau report stated that more than two million children were home-schooled, the number rising at a rate of between 15 and 20 per cent a year. It is estimated that 75 per cent of them are from evangelical families.

Tracey told me the principal reason she and her husband home-schooled their children was to be able to spend more time with them. It also gave them control over the curriculum.

'We don't shy away from any issues. We talk about abortion, homosexual issues, creation versus evolution, the environment. We try and come at it from every angle; some people believe that, but we believe this, and this is why we believe it.'

The belief that God created the world in six days was not simply an article of faith, Tracey said. There were 'a lot of facts that supported the creationist view. In fact Levi did a pretty good study on that, and it really takes more faith to believe in evolution.'

The more time I spent with Becky Fischer, the more I liked her. I disagreed with almost everything she said, but I was in no doubt about her sincerity and her commitment to the spiritual welfare of the children.

She had never married – she had never found a man 'that had a heart after God, like I wanted. Also I had a very strong personality, and I don't think men are attracted to that.' And so she had been denied the blessing of family. 'God wants to keep us from marrying the wrong person,' she said. 'And if I can raise a generation that will just marry the right one, I'll have done my job.' I thought I understood her better after that.

On my last day at the church, she suggested that some of the children might prophesy over the photographer, Evan, and me. She thought it might be more appropriate to do this privately, rather than in front of the congregation – a small mercy for which I, at least, was grateful.

We adjourned to a side room with five children whom Fischer deemed the most gifted in prophecy. Levi was among them.

After a short prayer, the children closed their eyes, while Evan and I waited. Then Levi spoke. 'This is for Mick. I saw a big star and it was blue, and it was right here where your heart would be. The blue means you're sensitive to things around you. I think the star means you're shining a light on to things – you can sense it, and you're shining it out. And that's probably why you're a reporter.'

It would be unbecoming of me to find this uncannily accurate.

Then Rachel spoke. She was about 11, the very picture of sweet innocence. 'This is for you.' She looked me in the eye. 'I saw you as a shark.'

A shark? 'Like, someone who knows what they want and goes for it.' Fischer attempted to pour balm: 'So positive, certain in his aims.'

Levi had messages for Evan – more specific things about crossroads and choices of direction that Evan said were 'spot-on'. Then Rachel said she had another vision for both of us. She saw us as mice being approached by a snake, that was Satan, and having to make a choice about which way to run. I was still thinking about being a shark. But sharks are God's creatures too, aren't they?

That night was the last of the conference, and the children were once again invited on stage. Chelsea, aged about 12, and wearing a T-shirt saying perfect angel, stood up.

'I had a vision about everybody here, and I saw them dressed as angels in white robes going up to heaven and having a party.' And what do you think that means, Fischer asked. 'I think it means that everybody here is going to heaven to have a party.' There was tumultuous applause.

The band started to play – something sweet and uplifting – and all the children rose from their seats, came forward and started to dance. Almost imperceptibly, the mood had changed, as if some un-spoken permission had been given for abandon. Around me, people began to moan and pray and speak in tongues. Adults moved among the children, laying on hands.

Then the music changed, to something anthemic, tribal. 'We dance! We shout! We lift up our voices and His kingdom comes down…'

Someone produced drums, congas, tambourines. Fischer's voice rose above the tumult. 'Stomp on the Devil's head! Stomp on the Devil's head! Tread on scorpions!'

The children began to stamp their feet, flinging themselves up and down, screaming to the heavens in a frenzied intoxication of the senses, until there was just the drums, the screaming and sobbing, and Fischer's voice, shouting like a woman possessed. 'Sound the alarm! Sound the alarm!'

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