Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 5.18
- Texas’s war on history – “Christian-nationalist zealots are trying to rewrite US history, airbrush slavery and enshrine creationism in Texas schools.” An article by this month’s Skepchick book club author. From Buzz Parsec.
- When a blow to the head creates a sudden genius – “Brain injuries can sometimes reveal extraordinary talents in people. Now, savant syndrome is helping to create whole new fields of scientific discovery.”
- The strange case of the vampire burial in Venice – Yes, but does this method work on sparkly vampires?
- Lowest difficulty setting follow up – Elyse posted the original article earlier this week. Here’s Scalzi’s response to some of the comments he’s gotten.
- Cute Animal Friday! The greatest animal photobombers of all time, from nowoo. A smiling sloth. And snuggling otters!
Sometimes I feel as if the Skeptical movement is too focused on science related topics. The article, “Texas’s war on history,” is a good example of why humanities need to be a part of the movement as well. I applaud the Skeptical Humanities blog (and realize I need to read it more often).
BRB, gonna hit myself in the head until I’m a genius.
The Texan war on history is apalling.
It demonstrates what happens when religious zealots get in power and abuse it in such fashion.
Someone should read the First Amendment to these asshats.
Read it loud and proud.
And repeat it until they either get the idea behind it or go insane.
On a related subject, does anyone know where to find an article that debunks the notion of the United States being a Christian Nation?
So far, I haven’t been able to spot one.
It’d make a nice subject for this site, if one hasn’t been written already.
“On a related subject, does anyone know where to find an article that debunks the notion of the United States being a Christian Nation?”
Much has been written on that topic. The first articles that come to mind are these, authored by Chris Rodda:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/4/29/11251/5051
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/6/3/175247/3490
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/6/10/161026/210
http://freethoughtblogs.com/rodda/2012/05/13/how-big-of-a-liar-is-david-barton-you-aint-even-gonna-believe-this-one/
As you can probably guess, she wrote these in response to obvious historical revisionism being pushed by David Barton.
There’s a ton more out there. Try searching for a particular founder (Washington, Jefferson, and Madison are good choices) along with keywords like deism or secularism.
Obviously, some of the Founding Fathers were religious, and some were an incomprehensible mass of contradictions (cough, John Adams, cough). However, the final proof that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation is in the Constitution. It makes no mention of any gods, requires no religious rituals or tenets, and explicitly prohibits the establishment of a state religion in the First Amendment.
Many thanks for the links!
I figured the Constitution itself was prove against the notion.
It’s ironic that my relatives gave me a small copy of the entire Constitution, when they like to proclaim the US is a Christian nation founded on Christian values.
Guess they never really read the thing.
Amanda,
Thanks for linking to that story about the religious right is doing in Texas, involving US history text books. We need to defend history from pseudohistory, just as we must defend science from pseudoscience. I let all of my followers know about it on Twitter, and I mentioned you by the way.