Can you find one in this photo?

Photo: Autumn Driscoll / Connecticut Post

From the article:

About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.

“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy week of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.

And it gets better.

Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn.

“This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country,” he said.

Nice job, asshole.

So how did the muslims at the scene react? Well, one responded with:

“This is unfortunate, but it’s a free country,” he commented on the protest. “But I believe Jesus would have been appalled by this. We revere Jesus the same way they do.”

I think that about says it all.

Mike Adams is a professor at UNC Wilmington.  He’s an incredibly strident individual, especialy when it comes to those opposite his philosophy. Such as:

So, when I get back to the secular university in August, I plan to round up the students I know who are most hostile to atheism. Then I’m going to get them to help me find atheist-haters willing to join atheist student groups across the South. I plan to use my young fundamentalist Christian warriors to undermine the mission of every group that disagrees with me on the existence of God.

Not debate, not confront but full on undermine. Nice picture so far.

This stems from a Supreme Court decision made at the beginning of July that student groups at universities cannot expect money from the university for support if they willingly exclude any students from joining.

If you want to be exclusionary – fine – but you do it on your own dime.

This has incensed Adams,  and if he marches his students into groups that are philosophical oppopessed to his own views, well in his own words:

If they don’t like it they can go to hell. That’s where they’re eventually going anyway.

The guy’s a peach, right? But wait it gets better!

I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

Wow. Just what everyone wants, a professor that purposely and willfully engages in intellectual dishonesty. UNC Wilmington must be so proud to have him on staff.

If you want to read more check PZ’s post and Daylight Atheism.

There’s a helpful website called Quack Watch. It’s run by Stephen Barrett, M.D and its mission among other things is:

Our Casewatch site contains a large library of legal cases, licensing board actions, government sanctions, and regulatory actions against questionable medical products.

So it’s a great place to find out what snake oil salesmen and their worthless (and sometimes dangerous) products are  up to.

Enter in one Doctor’s Data a lab that is beloved by quacks for its willingness to post questionable results and findings that are used to promote all sorts of pseudoscience.

I first saw this pop up on Orac’s blog (and has since spread like wild fire through said blogosphere), Doctor’s Data is suing Quackwatch to shut them up. Yes, they are trying to intimidate Dr. Barrett for calling them out. This time specifically on chelation – a process to remove heavy metals from the body. Chelation gets touted in all kinds of miracles cures. From getting rid of Autism to cancer.

In cases where you have heavy metal poisoning chelation works – otherwise all it removes is money from your wallet.

This is a particularly stupid move on Doctor’s Data part. While this lawsuit will be annoying and a burden for Dr. Barrett, should it actually go to court Doctor’s Data will have to prove the efficacy of their claims. That’s a no-win situation since what Doctor’s Data promotes doesn’t work.

So what’s the end game? To become such a burden on Dr. Barrett and Quackwatch that they’ll be forced to settle out of court. In this manner Doctor’s Data can claim a win.

This same scenario has played out for two years over in the UK with Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association who sued Simon for libel after being called out for what they were - pseudo scientific crap. It cost Simon a small fortune, but in the course of it all he waged a massive libel reform campaign that put the BAC under such a spotlight that they dropped the case (since all their methods were being shown as pure bunk!).

So we find ourselves in a similar situation. Dr. Barrett will have to stay the course until Doctor’s Data crumbles… under their own worthless data.

__________________________________________

Update: Liz Ditz of the I Speak Of Dreams blog has a fantastic breakdown of the science and story. Worth reading!

I saw the blurb go out over Twitter. Someone had scanned in a science book from Bob Jones University. I figured I’d take a look at the travesty once I got home and already PZ Myers had an increadible blog posting about it. Really, go read it.

The amount of ignorance in these books is jaw-dropping.

And people are graduating from these places with degrees.

I am at a loss at how they function in the work place having graduated without learning anything – actually worse, with learning the wrong thing.

Now, in the comments section of PZ’s post there is an apologist trying his hardest to spin this positively – that the book in question was revised in 2008. That really doesn’t make up for the fact that this is how ‘science’ was taught at BJU for years and years (and who knows what idiocy the book preaches now).

It just makes the future Theocratic States of America an even more frightening thought – we couldn’t even sustain a power grid under these morons at their current university educationed levels.

As reported from Think Progress:

In a radio interview with Bill Manders on Jan. 25, Sharron Angle — the GOP candidate and Tea Party darling challenging Harry Reid for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat — came out firmly against abortion. She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would interfere with God’s “plan” for them“

plus

MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

ANGLE: Not in my book.

MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

ANGLE: You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

There really aren’t powerful enough words to describe what a fruitbat this lady is and the utter lack of empathy a human being could possibly hold. I think a new bar has been set.

Still trying to figure out how she could be a ‘Tea Party darling’ with the amount of government intrusion she is suggesting in her statement. Do people think anymore – at all?

I mean… really…. “Congrats! It was God’s plan you were brutally assaulted and raped. Enjoy your rape baby!”

People want to give praise and worship that?

How fucked in the head do you have to be to go along with that idea?

Maryland is a confusing state. Solidly Democratic to a fault (to the point of almost eliminating any opposing view points, even within their own party), a large cross section of immigrant and ‘been here a while’s, and a sharp divide of city and rural life.

The rural side of things grabs the headlines today. What I thought had exploded onto the blogosphere today, was rather more of a slow rollout of shock at the actions of many students and parents in Rising Sun a town near the Pennsylvania and Delaware border.

The short recap: A Student of Rising Sun High School, Chad Skyler,  decides to start a non-religious student club after seeing blatantly religious student club at school. For his efforts he gets threatened and cajoled by peers and their parents.

Real classy shit.

You can read the extended versions here, here, and finally here (though I’m loathe to link in to a Facebook page).

The only thing I can really add here is I find it interesting that I had to hear about it from bloggers in the midwest. Not a peep from local papers or the state-wide paper, the Baltimore Sun. Reverse the variables in this story and I would be very surprised if it wasn’t front page news. And this is why people get a bellyful of the hypocritical stances pumped into people’s heads by the fervently religious.

This is a good life lesson for Chad -  People are pricks and they’ll use their lack of critical thinking or logic to drag you down to their level, especially when it comes to matters of religion. Good luck, kid.

So, lauded anti-gay activist George Rekers likes the men.

It’s really not surprising anymore. The louder they rail against it the more in the closet they are it seems.

The real crime here is the $120,00 in tax-payer money that got doled out for Reker’s expert testimony to suppress the rights of those who are homosexual. That’s on top of the decade’s worth of false witness this jerk has preached.

What a worthless, wrinkled husk of denial that man is.

So Iran got elected to the Commission on the Status of Women.

Really?

What are they smoking over there?

When even Fox News gets it:

handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”

you know you’ve seriously fucked up.

At least sanity was flouring somewhere. Belgium is close to passing a ban on the burqa. I know it infuriates me personally just because there’s no ‘u’ after the ‘q’.

The President of France said it better:

“In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. The burka is not a religious sign. It’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement”.

You tell ‘em Sarkozy!

The great minds at Ubisoft go down in burning flames yet again.

The authentication servers stopped working. Those would be the same servers that people who bought the game would have to log into to make the game work. Can’t log in? Can’t play! AWESOME JOB UBISOFT!!!!!!!!!

But hey, it’s OK, the pirates still get to play the game.

Remember those bent pieces of wire that are supposed to pass for bomb sniffers, the ones used ineffectually in Iraq, and then the company’s owner was arrested in England for selling these pieces or junk?

Well, the army chief General Anupong Paojinda of Thailand thinks they are just spiffy and is using them in his country to not catch bombs as well. To understand the depths of this man’s moronic thinking, I give you:

“I respect the scientific tests but at this stage there is no banning order by the government so the army will continue to use it,” he said.

These would be the tests that showed these dowsing rods were what all dowsing rods are - ineffectual pieces of bent metal. The same tests that got the maker of these dowsing rods arrested in England.

So while people continue to die in Thailand due to this ignoramus’ actions, the army will continue to use these devices that don’t work… because.

Yet More Stupidity

As Bad Astronomer dug up on his blog, Iraq is still using these things with abandon. Good job Iraq, way to join the 21st century. Oh wait, you are too busy exploding from bombs walking by your dowsing rods.

Isn’t it awesome when people above you adopt pseudoscientific bullshit that gets you killed. I doubt we’ll see either of these Generals using these rods to detect bombs. In fact, both these guys ARE rods.