There was an interesting moment in the 60 Minutes interview with Obama on Sunday – Steve Kroft said (approximately, from memory), “There were members of the group who disagreed with you about the plan?” It sounded like a set-up for “oh dear, dissension in the administration, chaos, management problems, oh noes,” but Obama answered very calmly and with some emphasis that he wants it that way. He wants people with different views, and he wants them to feel completely free to disagree with him and argue their case. While he was saying it a little voice was shouting “So unlike Bush! So unlike Bush!”

He went on to the effect that that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. That’s how … Read the rest

I see a new opportunity to get learnings: you can get a master’s degree in general education (Ed.M.) with an emphasis in Science and the Public via the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Center for Inquiry. There are summer classes. There’s one set on Science and Religion, taught by John Shook and Michael Dowd, and another set on Communicating Science to the Public, taught by John Shook and Chris Mooney.

Who is Michael Dowd?

Reverend  Michael Dowd, an outspoken religious naturalist, is America’s evolutionary evangelist. His book, Thank God for Evolution, was endorsed by 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, noted skeptics, and by religious leaders across the spectrum…

Sharpen your pencils.… Read the rest

Nope. No can do. Will not fly.

Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper Der Zeitung has apologized for publishing an iconic photograph of President Obama and his national security team with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security team member Audrey Tomason photoshopped out…

Der Zeitung addressed what it cast as “allegations” that the women had been removed from the photograph because “religious Jews denigrate women or do not respect women in public office,” calling such suggestions “malicious slander and libel.”

The newspaper offered kind words for Clinton and said it respects all government officials, but that religious considerations prevent it from showing images of women.

That’s the thing you can’t do – the thing that won’t fly. You can’t treat … Read the rest

Really, there is something faintly disgusting about all the serious newspapers talking about bin Laden’s three “widows.” For one thing – three? Three widows? If there are three, they’re not “widows” in the usual sense of the word. It’s too much “respect” for polygamy to call them widows (or wives) – you need different words for a system in which men can have lots while women can have no more than a fraction of one.

For another thing – widows? That assumes they were genuine wives first, having been genuinely married. In fact, from what I’ve read, at least one of them was simply given to him by her father or some other Important man, like a bottle of vodka.… Read the rest

I’d forgotten this. It’s quite funny (if I do say so myself).… Read the rest

Via Jerry Coyne, I find Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which in turn is the “flagship” of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the notoriously reactionary outfit that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter abandoned when it ruled that married women are subordinate to their husbands – I find Albert Mohler, I say, turning and rending a Christian less doctrinaire than himself.

In making his case, Giberson uses the old argument that God has given humanity two books of revelation — the Bible and the created order. This is one of Giberson’s most frequently offered arguments. It is a theologically disastrous argument in his hands, for he allows modern naturalistic science to silence the Bible, God’s