Random Stuff XXVI: Politics and Religion Edition
I'm just wrapping up the first of two consecutive 70-hour work weeks, and thus have had very little time to devote to LiveJournal; but with the upcoming election drawing near, I'll sacrifice a few minutes of sleep to make this important announcement for all Ohioans and anyone else interested in the quality of public-school education in Ohio:
A while back my friend Stephanie told me that Deborah Owens-Fink, the creationist ringleader in Ohio's Board of Education, is up for re-election this November, and that her opponent, Tom Sawyer, a former Congressman, was seeking donations toward his campaign. Normally we wouldn't have the slightest interest in a Board of Education race, let alone one that isn't even in our district, but with the alarming anti-scientific trend plaguing the US, I've recently become invested in protecting and improving science education. Given the importance of this particular race, Kathy and I happily chipped in to Mr. Sawyer's campaign fund. I urge concerned Ohio residents to do the same. (Ohio offers a state tax credit of up to $50 for donations to State Board of Education candidates!)
What I really wanted, however, was a single comprehensive source of information on Ohio School Board candidates-specifically, with respect to identifying the pro-science candidates. I've since discovered one: Help Ohio Public Education (HOPE), governed by a coalition of concerned university professors and other concerned citizens, including two from religious organizations (the Vatican and Cleveland's Temple Tifereth-Israel). HOPE addresses a variety of issues in choosing candidates to support, science curricula prominent among them. Regrettably, I don't have the opportunity to vote in any of the key elections, but the in-laws do, and they're well-informed and sympathetic toward teaching real science.
I'm going to add one more canard to my budding list of stupid and untrue sayings: "Know God, Know Peace; No God, No Peace." I don't think I need to explain just how far off-base this one is, but just as an example, if it were true, Jerusalem-holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims-would be the most idyllic, nonviolent place on earth.
(And if you believe replacing "God" with "Jesus" will make any difference, you don't know much history. Just look at northern Europe over the two centuries following the Protestant Reformation. I can identify five more major counterexamples without even thinking about it.)
I realized that in actuality, the words are accurate-it's just the punctuation that needs correcting. Here's how it should read:
"Know God, Know Peace"? No! God, No Peace!
While we're on the subject, the Pew Reseach Center conducted a poll last year on Americans' views on using torture against suspected terrorists. Only 31% of white American Protestants polled, and a mere 26% of Catholics, believed that torture was never justified under any circumstances. In contrast, fully 41% of those identifying themselves as "secular"-atheist or agnostic-unconditionally opposed the use of torture. Two-fifths is still far too few, but this survey pretty well refutes the claim that organized religion and concern for one's fellow human beings are inextricably intertwined.
Anyone who knows Jack Chick, purveyor of disturbing, paranoid evangelical tracts, will be surprised to learn, as I was, that Chick Publications is reaching out to African-Americans! Chick's hard-working propagandists have reworked some old classics to feature black characters. The tract Soul Sisters, a reworking of Best Friends (penned by the unsteady hand of Jack T. himself), introduces a black Adam and Eve, black cherubim, a black Virgin Mary and even a black Jesus! God, however, is still white; apparently Heaven has yet to repeal all of its Jim Crow laws. (I sure can't tell where the artists have edited Chick's original ham-fisted scrawls to add the characters' finely-shaded African features-can you?)
Ol' Jack is taking a huge gamble here: he's risking his entire white racist audience, undoubtedly a large portion of his flock, to gather in an unknown number of African-Americans. Still, judging from the Cleveland area, it may be a profitable venture: African-Americans are said to account for a disproportionate fraction of the evangelical community here; my own observations of custom license plates incorporating "GOD" and "4GIVEN" corroborate this finding. (I strongly suspect that in this instance, socioeconomic status is the more accurate predictor of Fundamentalism than race, and the observed correlation is an artifact of social inequality; but I don't know enough to say for sure.)
And again: as long as we're rounding up, imprisoning and torturing suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, can we throw in a few of these known terrorists as well?
In case you find too much of a common, depressing thread in the above sections, here's something random. I had to renew my car registration this week. On the return envelope I noticed an advertisement for the online renewal service, called oplates.com. I read the URL as "www.opiates.com," which was perfectly consistent with my previous experience with the Ohio Department of Vehicles, as the employee who assigned me the wrong custom plate seemed to have been under their influence.
The oplates.com site is actually pretty neat. I could even change my license plate to what it was supposed to read for only $3.50.
A while back my friend Stephanie told me that Deborah Owens-Fink, the creationist ringleader in Ohio's Board of Education, is up for re-election this November, and that her opponent, Tom Sawyer, a former Congressman, was seeking donations toward his campaign. Normally we wouldn't have the slightest interest in a Board of Education race, let alone one that isn't even in our district, but with the alarming anti-scientific trend plaguing the US, I've recently become invested in protecting and improving science education. Given the importance of this particular race, Kathy and I happily chipped in to Mr. Sawyer's campaign fund. I urge concerned Ohio residents to do the same. (Ohio offers a state tax credit of up to $50 for donations to State Board of Education candidates!)
What I really wanted, however, was a single comprehensive source of information on Ohio School Board candidates-specifically, with respect to identifying the pro-science candidates. I've since discovered one: Help Ohio Public Education (HOPE), governed by a coalition of concerned university professors and other concerned citizens, including two from religious organizations (the Vatican and Cleveland's Temple Tifereth-Israel). HOPE addresses a variety of issues in choosing candidates to support, science curricula prominent among them. Regrettably, I don't have the opportunity to vote in any of the key elections, but the in-laws do, and they're well-informed and sympathetic toward teaching real science.
I'm going to add one more canard to my budding list of stupid and untrue sayings: "Know God, Know Peace; No God, No Peace." I don't think I need to explain just how far off-base this one is, but just as an example, if it were true, Jerusalem-holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims-would be the most idyllic, nonviolent place on earth.
(And if you believe replacing "God" with "Jesus" will make any difference, you don't know much history. Just look at northern Europe over the two centuries following the Protestant Reformation. I can identify five more major counterexamples without even thinking about it.)
I realized that in actuality, the words are accurate-it's just the punctuation that needs correcting. Here's how it should read:
"Know God, Know Peace"? No! God, No Peace!
While we're on the subject, the Pew Reseach Center conducted a poll last year on Americans' views on using torture against suspected terrorists. Only 31% of white American Protestants polled, and a mere 26% of Catholics, believed that torture was never justified under any circumstances. In contrast, fully 41% of those identifying themselves as "secular"-atheist or agnostic-unconditionally opposed the use of torture. Two-fifths is still far too few, but this survey pretty well refutes the claim that organized religion and concern for one's fellow human beings are inextricably intertwined.
Anyone who knows Jack Chick, purveyor of disturbing, paranoid evangelical tracts, will be surprised to learn, as I was, that Chick Publications is reaching out to African-Americans! Chick's hard-working propagandists have reworked some old classics to feature black characters. The tract Soul Sisters, a reworking of Best Friends (penned by the unsteady hand of Jack T. himself), introduces a black Adam and Eve, black cherubim, a black Virgin Mary and even a black Jesus! God, however, is still white; apparently Heaven has yet to repeal all of its Jim Crow laws. (I sure can't tell where the artists have edited Chick's original ham-fisted scrawls to add the characters' finely-shaded African features-can you?)
Ol' Jack is taking a huge gamble here: he's risking his entire white racist audience, undoubtedly a large portion of his flock, to gather in an unknown number of African-Americans. Still, judging from the Cleveland area, it may be a profitable venture: African-Americans are said to account for a disproportionate fraction of the evangelical community here; my own observations of custom license plates incorporating "GOD" and "4GIVEN" corroborate this finding. (I strongly suspect that in this instance, socioeconomic status is the more accurate predictor of Fundamentalism than race, and the observed correlation is an artifact of social inequality; but I don't know enough to say for sure.)
And again: as long as we're rounding up, imprisoning and torturing suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, can we throw in a few of these known terrorists as well?
In case you find too much of a common, depressing thread in the above sections, here's something random. I had to renew my car registration this week. On the return envelope I noticed an advertisement for the online renewal service, called oplates.com. I read the URL as "www.opiates.com," which was perfectly consistent with my previous experience with the Ohio Department of Vehicles, as the employee who assigned me the wrong custom plate seemed to have been under their influence.
The oplates.com site is actually pretty neat. I could even change my license plate to what it was supposed to read for only $3.50.