I really enjoyed this comic from Cectic. It nicely captures the Lovecraftian vibe that often seems to underlie creationists’ desperate flailings. By way of Pharyngula.

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

- “The Call of Cthulhu”, H. P. Lovecraft

Hypothesis: There are two types of people.

1. Some people read a poem like “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace” and think it’s a beautiful vision of the future of humanity.
2. Other people, like me, recognize that the utopia described in this poem looks an awful lot like anarcho-primitivist civilization-suicide and are thoroughly creeped out.

We’ll make great pets? No, thanks. Enjoy your reservation. The rest of us will be busy getting on with things.

The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine brought Yvonne Ridley to campus this week:

When award-winning British journalist Yvonne Ridley was captured by the Taliban in 2001, the last thing she expected was to convert to Islam two years later. After promising to read the Qur’an following her release, Ridley stayed true to her word and found that, contrary to the actions of the Taliban toward women, the Qur’an was in fact what she later described as a “Magna Carta for women”.

Yvonne Ridley, though, evidently doesn’t think that the Taliban were all that bad.

Go buy a T-shirt.

I found this flyer at the UC Irvine bus stop.

In case you aren’t catching the creepy vibe, skim the Wikipedia article about Walsch through to the bit about “indigo children”, and look at this interview:

NDW: They’re an antenna for the highest energy, at any time and under any circumstance. So, naturally they’re impatient when their thick-headed parents are trying to keep them out of harm’s way. There is no harm, when you follow Divine wisdom. It’s just that most human people can’t feel the magic carpet.

Ick.

This one takes the cake for pseudoscientific claptrap. Ready? Here we go. Conservapedia’s “African Americans” article (because “Calling them Negroes is just uncouth.” – emphasis mine) ends thusly:

Intelligence
A gap in IQ scores of 12 to 18 points (compared with whites and Asians) has been variously attributed to innate ability (see Eugenics) or to the cultural and educational legacy of slavery. For a scientific treatment, see The Bell Curve.

Yes, they’re referring to Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve.

(by way of The State Of… and OK You Turkeynecks)

“Negroes”, though, pops up in the creationist silliness:

• Apobaramin: An apobaramin is a group of holobaramins. Humans and Dogs are an apobaramin since both members are holobaramins. A group containing Negroes and wolves is not an apobaramin since both members are monobaramins.

Yes, they really are equating race with subspecies. Contrast this to the Wikipedia “Race” article:

Many physical anthropologists have concluded that H. sapiens was polytypic in the past (H. sapiens neandertalensis, now extinct, having been a subspecies of H. sapiens). All human beings now alive, however, are regarded as belonging to the same subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens – in effect, H. sapiens is now monotypic.

and to the Wikipedia “Subspecies” article:

In zoology, the scientific name of a subspecies is the binomen followed immediately by a subspecific name, e.g. Homo sapiens sapiens. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th edition, 2000) does not attempt to codify any “infrasubspecific entities” (e.g. human races or pet breeds).

(by way of Jack and Jill Politics and Too Sense, who have more on Conservapedia’s race follies)

Conservapedia’s “Slavery” article also takes excruciating pains to establish the Biblical permissibility of owning other humans.

“Slavery” is also referenced, permitted and regulated in the Bible. The Hebrew word ebed is translated as “slave” or “servant”, but the concept is not the same as the modern understanding of “slave”. It included “persons in subordinate positions” Therefore “all the subjects of Israel and Judah are called slaves of their kings“. [emphases in the original]

Additionally, the Bible teaches that all property belongs to God, with mankind responsible for looking after it for God.

Some biblical passages mentioning slavery are:

[lists ten passages]

The Old Testament alone, prior to New Testament considerations, broadly prohibits the permanent enslavement of the native inhabitants of Israel but permits the enslavement of immigrants and the occupants of other countries. Depending on the precise circumstances, ethnicity, nationality and any enslaved relatives of a slave, some must be freed after a specified time, while others remain slaves for life. Though physical violence to slaves is permitted, murder is not.

What this says about ideologically-driven education and the prospects for American conservatism, you tell me.

What does it say about one when one would worship a thing that hates?

God Hates the World from Westboro Baptist Church

Thanks, James, for rotting my brain. By way of Pharyngula.

Christian proselytizing is a weekly feature of the UC Irvine campus. Here, several Muslim students debate the reliability and transmission of religious texts with a determined, middle-aged evangelical. The student in the white T-shirt, and the student behind him in the red T-shirt, were bystanders, I think. Thursday afternoon.