Philip

Found on one of the daily RSS feeds, kind of amusing!

“The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything” is a new book by science writer Gordy Slack (Amazon link here) about the attempt to bring Intelligent Design (ID) into the science curriculum of schools in Dover, Pennsylvania, USA and subsequent court battle between the school board and 11 concerned parents. At the time, the school board wanted to offer ID as a alternative to Evolution as a suitable explanation for the origins of life on Earth. The parents however believed ID was thinly veiled Creationalism renamed and that teaching it in school would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which reads as “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”) if found to be promoting religion or of a non-secular purpose.

The court case (Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District) ran from late September to early November 2005 before a verdict by Judge John Jones was given on 20/12/2005 ruling that the school board’s efforts were found to be unconstitutional, and that ID has no place in the classrooms of Pennsylvania. It was a huge set back to the involved ID proponents who were hoping to make it part of science curriculums in general as an alternative to Evolution. Most interestingly, Judge Jones found it ironic that several individuals on the school board lied and committed perjury to hide the real purpose of the ID policy, of which they had a very tenuous understanding, at best.

I found Gordy Slack’s book to be a pretty worthwhile read as he was present for the court case and gives in depth recollections of the proceedings. At just over 200 pages it’s an easy, engaging read into one of the more interesting court cases of recent times; well worth having a look into.

Mansour al-Nogaidan on WashingtonPost.com gives his view that Islam needs a Reformation after his “… long and painful spiritual journey.” and believes this reformation is critical to Islam’s future.

Mansour gives details of his involvement with hard-line Salafi Muslims and later at age 26 realised many of his Muslim role models were hypocrites and credits two books he read at the time with helping him realise that he should question and criticize his religious leaders pragmatically.

These views were not universally appreciated and resulted in him being banned from writing, losing most of his friends, being fired and ultimately having a fatwa posted from the mufti of Saudi Arabia claiming he was an infidel and should be killed.

Read about it here.

Irshad Manji, author of “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change” gives her view that as a Muslim, she is offended that there is hypocrisy in how Muslims treat each other (citing honour killings, fatwas against hugging, suicide bombings and other examples) and how no public condemnation of these issues has been raised while when something Muslims find objectional occurs, they go all out to display their displeasure (such as the knighting of Salman Rushdie).

Read about it from Religion News Blog here.

While having a very quick look into the issue, I discovered on the flip side various Muslims are displeased with Irshad’s books and propaganda that they consider is being taken wholesale by the West, so there is some serious controversy going on claiming she is taking quotes out of context, lying about being targetted for death and so on. Hopefully eventually some useful dialog and debate will come out of it…

Read it here.

I came across this link a while ago, still quite interesting to read. They’re basically comics with a strong religious viewpoint over various issues for the youth of today such as Evolution, Drugs and Abortion.

See them here.

Sarda Sahney from Scientific Blogging gives her thoughts about the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Apparently it claims that all dinosaurs were herbivores originally. A curious visitor queried why herbivores like T.Rex needed 6″ teeth, helpful guides explained that T.Rex used them to crack open coconuts and that only after the Original Sin did the dinosaurs start eating meat.

The mind boggles. Read about it here.

SecularSkeptic at BlogSpot details his reasons for converting from a highly religious Mormon lifestyle to one of aethism. Quite an interesting read, read part 1 here and part 2 here. I think it’s important more details like this come out so people can make up their own minds whether to stay religious or convert to another more suitable belief if they think it fits them better.

Christopher Hitchens lays it on the line that he thinks Rev. Jerry Falwell did more to disrupt the peace processes in the Middle East with his anti-Jewish sentiments (4:52):

He is then invited to Fox News to discuss his claims (9:45):

Christopher manages to talk over Hannity and Colmes (unusual indeed, given Hannity is a real master of interrupting) to reiterate that he doesn’t like Rev. Jerry Falwell and thinks he was a danger to society for his fundamentalist views.

Christopher happens to be the author of “God is not Great” which is his latest book about how he thinks religions are harming the world more than helping at this point in time, quite an interesting read.

Jerry Falwell has passed away. The well known TV evangelist was 73 and presumably suffered a heart rhythm abnormality while at his campus office. Read about it from Yahoo here along with a nice biography of his career over the years.

John Bartkowski from Mississippi State University researched 16,000 children to see how religion affects children while growing up. Apparently, parents that both regularly attend religious services and discussed religion with their children were rated as having children that had better self control, social skills and learning approaches than children of non-religious parents. However, if parents argued about religion the children were more likely to have problems (not surprising). John himself points out some problems with his study and that it may be possible that parents who raise well behaved children tend to be in religious congregations (invalidating his study).

Read the article from Live Science here.