The Sagan Society
will be more or less offline
for Summer 2003.
Thanks to everyone who took an
interest in our events this year.

Here is our content from the last update in April:

Rationally Speaking

• April is lamb season, isn't it? This month, Rationally Speaking columnist Massimo Pigliucci asks the difficult question, "Whence animal rights?" His answer seeks a clear path past the rampant emotionalism, vast oversimplifications and dodgy pseudo-arguments that normally shape discussion in this area. In the end, he gives an account of the core issues that must be addressed in any rational discussion of the issue.

IN THE NEWS
Religion, culture, politics, science

• Silence is Patriotic: Why go anywhere but The Onion for incisive political commentary?
• Christian tolerance on display: Open displays of prejudice and hostility by public officials are generally frowned upon, but blatant bigotry is apparently A-OKAY if the target is a God-less heathen... as freethought activist Herb Silverman discovered when half of the Charleston City Council got up and walked out on this thoughtful invocation decrying prejudice.
• Ironic educational twist of the week: A student satanist hammers home a simple logical point to those who want religion in our schools. Legally and logically, allowing religion into public schools requires allowing ANY religion into public schools. *snicker*
• An educational "outing" in Arkansas: Harrassment of gay teens in high school is hardly a new story, but usually the harrassment comes from other students. At Jacksonville Junior High, the abuse and preaching came from teachers and administrators.
• Religious faith as a brain disorder: The evidence is building that religious visions can be directly attributed to temporal lobe epilepsy.
• Rationality, consistency and international law: Does the U.S. invoke international law only to turn around and defy it whenever convenient? You be the judge.
• Whose side is God on? There seems to be a perverted pseudo-reasoning at the heart of the "prayer warrior" movement: People on both sides of a war pray for victory. But no one can deny that overwhelming military supremacy will ultimately decide this war, or any other. Therefore if one believes that God does intervene in Earthly wars, one must believe that God is always on the side of whomever has military supremacy. Not only does might make right, military might makes divine right.
  This scary syllogism is brought to you buy the good Christians at:
  http://www.prayforourpresident.com/ and
  http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/.
• Just what we need - another public display of piety: The House of Representatives passed this resolution on Thursday calling for a national day of humility, prayer and fasting in this time of war and terrorism. Never mind the transparent contradiction with the First Amendment. Never mind the very selective reading of history in the whereases, wherein Ben Franklin's call for prayer during the Constitutional Convention is noted while the rejection of that motion is omitted. Never mind the blatant lies, such as the claim that prayer serves as "a means of producing unity and solidarity among all the diverse people of this Nation" when actually it serves as a means to display our elected officials' piety as publicly as possible and to inform Americans of no faith that they are decidedly second-class citizens (at best). Even if you gloss over these things, can you think of even one single action of the current administration that could properly be characterized as demonstrating genuine humility rather than monumental arrogance? Amidst the current flood of expensive propoganda and cheap rhetoric, the level of hypocrisy displayed by this resolution sets a new high-water mark.

Previously IN THE NEWS
Religion, culture, politics, science

• The REAL weapons of mass destruction: A New Zealand UFO "expert" claims that President Bush decided to attack Iraq because he was scared Saddam Hussein would use technology from a crashed alien spaceship.
• Is the Oval Office a pulpit? The Christian Science Monitor points out that even many evangelical Christians are less than thrilled with Dubya's hyper-religious rhetoric.
• Armageddon days are here again: This sharp essay has a great collection of end-times nonsense with relation to the slaughter in Iraq.
• New York City is abuzz over a talking carp: The Guardian gets props for the best headline: "Word is made flesh as God reveals himself... as a fish." Here is the complete text of the NY Times story on another site where you don't have to register.
• Forget the fish, follow the eggplant: Suspiciously we don't have an actual picture, but the Hindustan Times reports that a village woman sliced open an eggplant only to discover that the seeds spell "Allah." Well, I suppose it's more interesting than another tortilla image of Jesus...
• Your tax dollars at work... funding religious publications: A charter school in Kansas is spending public funds on religious textbooks with titles like "Children's Bible Handbook" and "Exploring God's World: Science." How about a textbook titled "How to Skewer the First Amendment"?
• It's not getting any better as we learn more: A tale of egregious neglect of serial sexual abuse from a New York diocese of the Catholic Church.
• Conspiracies: There are real conspiracies, obviously. Many individuals and dioceses in the Catholic Church have clearly conspired to shield child molesters. But what about alien breeding experiments and faked moon landings? Here's an interesting article about the psychology of conspiracy theories.
• What's more hilarious than Scalia getting a free speech award? He's banned broadcast media from covering his acceptance speech. The man doesn't even make pointing out his rampant hypocrisy a challenge, does he?
• Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: Actually, that's the title of a Pogues album, just to get your attention. Skipping the rum and lash part, this fascinating article is strictly about sodomy from a historical and logical perspective.

T-shirts

• Sagan Society t-shirts are still available: Contact TSS Webmaster George Felis to arrange purchases. Click here to see the design. (Be warned: It's a large PDF file because that's all the webmaster had handy.)

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last updated May 4, 2003

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