Author: Ophelia Benson

More from Ryan Lizza’s article on Bachmann.

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been  shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular  Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a  conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American  politician of her stature.

Extreme, and not in a good way. One biggy is an evangelist and theologian called Francis Schaeffer, who

condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin,  secular humanism, and postmodernism. He repeatedly reminds viewers of the “inerrancy” of the Bible and the necessity of a Biblical world view. “There is  only one real solution, and that’s right back where the early church was,” Schaeffer tells his audience. “The early church believed that only the Bible was  the final authority. What these people really believed and what gave them their  whole strength was in the truth of the Bible as the absolute infallible word of  God.”

See, I don’t want someone like that as president. I don’t want to obey the bible.

Francis Schaeffer instructed his followers and students at L’Abri that the Bible  was not just a book but “the total truth.” He was a major contributor to the  school of thought now known as Dominionism, which relies on Genesis 1:26, where  man is urged to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of  the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping  thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Sara Diamond, who has written several books  about evangelical movements in America, has succinctly defined the philosophy  that resulted from Schaeffer’s interpretation: “Christians, and Christians  alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ  returns.”

Don’t want. Don’t want don’t want don’t want.

Bachmann enrolled at the new O. W. Coburn School of Law, at Oral Roberts  University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Bible, not the Constitution or conventional  jurisprudence, guides the curriculum. For several years, the school could not  get accreditation, because students were required to sign a “code of honor” attesting to their Christian belief and commitment. The first issue of the law  review, Journal of Christian Jurisprudence, explains the two goals of the  school: “to equip our students with the ability to bring God’s healing power to  reconcile individuals and to restore community wholeness,” and “to restore law  to its historic roots in the Bible.”

Among the professors were Herbert W. Titus, a Vice-Presidential candidate of the  far-right U.S. Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party), and John  Whitehead, who started the Rutherford Institute, a conservative legal-advocacy  group. The law review published essays by Schaeffer and Rousas John Rushdoony, a  prominent Dominionist who has called for a pure Christian theocracy in which Old  Testament law—execution for adulterers and homosexuals, for example—would be  instituted.

I’m tempted to start campaigning for Mitt Romney.

One of Michele Bachmann’s favorite books is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.

Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox  Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take  on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance  outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century,  when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles.

I did not know this. Really. “The godless North”? That’s a bit of a flub, for a start – the North was hardly godless. And as for the South as a Christian nation, aren’t we always being told – we atheists – that we stupidly overlook the wonderful wonderfulness of religion for instance its vital role in the abolition of slavery? Yes, we are. So if the South was “a Christian nation” what becomes of that claim?

More Wilkins:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society  which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial  animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual  respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men  give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go  to the Christian faith. . . . The unity and companionship that existed between  the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

Slavery was a matter of “men  giv[ing] themselves to a common cause”? (Where did the women go?) What would that have been then? The enrichment of white men who owned fertile land for growing cotton? The preservation of white people from hard labor in a hot humid malarial climate? Funny idea of a common cause.

For several years, the book, which Bachmann’s campaign declined to discuss with  me, was listed on her Web site, under the heading “Michele’s Must Read List.”

I keep hearing people say “I hope she’s nominated.” Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Don’t think she couldn’t win.

There seem to be different views on what “skepticism” is. Daniel Loxton seems to define it (or perhaps I mean prefer it) quite narrowly.

For decades, skepticism has very deliberately worked to stay close to what it does best: tackling empirical questions in the realm of pseudoscience and the paranormal, and (as the other side of this same coin) promoting scientific literacy.

That’s skepticism? That’s it? To me that sounds more like science education combined with some applied science. I thought skepticism could be applied a good deal more generally than that.

Also, perhaps, more…searchingly.

consider this passage from the first editorial of North America’s first regular skeptical publication, written when I was a toddler:

Finally, a word might be said about our exclusive concern with scientific investigation and empirical claims. The Committee takes no position regarding nonempirical or mystical claims. We accept a scientific viewpoint and will not argue for it in these pages. Those concerned with metaphysics and supernatural claims are directed to those journals of philosophy and religion dedicated to such matters.

Demonstrable evidence is common ground for skeptics like Houdini (who wrote, “I firmly believe in a Supreme Being and that there is a Hereafter”).

But if you’re a skeptic, then the question arises, why do you firmly believe in a Supreme Being and that there is a Hereafter? What are your reasons? What causes you to believe those things?

The answer isn’t obvious, after all. It’s the opposite of obvious. There seems to be nothing in the world that corresponds to a reason for believing those things, and skeptics as such generally want reasons for beliving things. Not invariably, but generally. So why would a skeptic believe those things? And why is it not part of skepticism to ask questions of that kind?

It seems to be because Loxton doesn’t want atheism messing up skepticism, but that just presents us with the same question in a slightly different form.

Carl Zimmer has (with help from Susan Greenfield) created a new Twitter meme.

The neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has for several years been saying “Look out! The internet will rewire your brain.”

She warns that Twitter is turning us into social cripples. When asked for evidence, she either points to papers that provide no support for her sweeping claims, or says that we shouldn’t wait for evidence. Her claims positively hum with contradiction. In order to make new technologies seem truly sinister, she ends up getting nostalgic about television.

She has, too.

When I was a kid, television was the centre of the home, rather like the Victorian piano was.

That made me yell with laughter – the tv as a fireplace.

Carl continues:

Yesterday, The Guardian followed up with an interview with Greenfield, in which she defended herself against such attacks. Along the way, one of the things she said finally rewired my brain into a seizure:

“I point to the increase in autism and I point to internet use. That’s all.”

Which drove me to Twitter, to sum up the ridiculousness of such a statement in 140 characters or less:

I point to the increase in esophageal cancer and I point to The Brady Bunch. That’s all. #greenfieldism

And others joined in.

I point to Alzheimer’s and I point to cheese doodles. That’s all. #greenfieldism

Try your own!