Unreasonable Faith is a blog about religion, science, and skepticism. It was started by Daniel Florien in 2008 and he is now joined by a number of other contributors.
Often during the abortion debate, adoption is proffered as a solution which might make abortion unnecessary in most cases. Most people on both sides of the debate find adoption at the very least less problematic than abortion, and wish to see it promoted as an option. The primary roadblock to this solution being in any way practical, however, is that there aren’t nearly enough prospective parents willing to adopt. Of those willing, some are not able, and some are overly selective about who they are willing to adopt.
One would think then that anything to make adoption easier and broaden the pool of the number of people who can provide for children effectively to be a welcome change.
Unfortunately, a family court in Georgia doesn’t see it that way. As covered over at the Volokh Conspiracy, in a March 2010 decision, the court ruled that a late middle aged couple who had been foster parents to an infant girl and decided to adopt her were not suitable to adopt, even after acting as her foster parents for three years. What was the one factor that disqualified them?
They weren’t married.
Interestingly, according to Georgia law, being married is not a requirement for legal adoption. The court, in a rare and flagrant case of conservative judicial activism, decided to ignore the strictures of the law and substitute its own moral judgment, saying: “[the couple were] living in an immoral, meretricious relationship, … and that the adoption and their continued custody is inappropriate.”
Thankfully, a Georgia Appeals Court swiftly reversed the decision. Still, it shows just how far reaching of a hold that religious categories of sexual morality, and specifically a monomaniacal emphasis on marriage as the only appropriate form of sexual relationship, can have even today in the context of a simple legal proceeding. It is remarkable that the hold of those beliefs overpowered consideration for the well-being of the child as well as adherence to the law.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Glenn Beck and the conservative movement in general have tried to associate themselves with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
One thing that struck me was how many of the conservatives seemed to be getting their entire understanding of Dr. King from his “I have a Dream” speech. But this was probably the most optimistic of King’s speeches. They ignore all the rest of Dr. King’s speeches, and the rest of what he worked for. They’re very good at recognizing the color-blind society that was Dr. King’s ultimate goal, but they ignore the steps that he thought would be necessary in order to bring it about.
Conservatives are doing with Dr. King what they so frequently do with the Bible: they are proof-texting.
Dr. King still has enormous moral authority in our culture, and some folks want to seize hold of it without having to listen to the whole message. They’d like to remember his “I Have A Dream” speech, but forget that it was delivered during the “March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” They want to remember his martyrdom, but forget that it happened while he was supporting sanitation workers who were on strike.
I was going to compare some of Beck’s statements to selections of Dr. King’s speeches, but unfortunately my copy of A Testament of Hope is packed away. Luckily, Ben Dimiero over at MediaMatters has his copy, and he’s done an excellent job of comparing Beck’s favorite themes to Dr. King’s. Consider a few quotes:
Beck: “They’re collapsing the system and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income for all the workers! Workers of the world unite!” [...]
King: “We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed national income.” [...]
Beck: “The thing that I do find about Barack Obama is that — and I think America is starting to catch on to this — this guy really is a Marxist. He believes in the redistribution of wealth. He believes in the global government and everything else.” [...]
King: “[W]e are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars — and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.” [...]
Notice how much King sounds like Beck’s worst nightmare? Yet this is the man whose mantle Beck is trying to wear? Consider this quote from a speech he gave to his staff in 1966 and tell me how Beck and his crew would react:
“We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. We can’t talk about solving the economic problems of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with the captains of industry … Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism … There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism. ”
(“Frogmore Speech”, quoted in I May Not Get There With You, pp. 87-88)
A lawsuit was filed in theUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the Arkansas state law known as the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act (Act 590), which mandated the teaching of “creation science” in Arkansas public schools, was unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Judge William Overton handed down a decision on January 5, 1982, giving a clear, specific definition of science as a basis for ruling that creation science is religion and is simply not science. The ruling was not binding on schools outside the Eastern District of Arkansas but had considerable influence on subsequent rulings on the teaching of creationism.
Ben Dry has created a visual representation of the evolution of the changes in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (you know, our Most Sacred Holy Bible!) throughout the six editions.
This is what Ben says about it:
We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.
The second edition, for instance, adds a notable “by the Creator” to the closing paragraph, giving greater attribution to a higher power. In another example, the phrase “survival of the fittest” — usually considered central to the theory and often attributed to Darwin — instead came from British philosopher Herbert Spencer, and didn’t appear until the fifth edition of the text. Using the six editions as a guide, we can see the unfolding and clarification of Darwin’s ideas as he sought to further develop his theory during his lifetime.
A variety of Australian skink – like snake but with four tiny legs – is slowly starting abandon egg laying and beginning to give birth to live offspring like a mammal does.
Skinks in the mountainous region of New South Wales have almost entirely moved to live birth. But the same species living in the lowlands along the coast are far more likely to lay eggs containing their young.
According to a 1999 study that looked at the transition that some lizards are known to make from egg-laying to live-birth, the evolutionary step only travels in one direction. Once a species begins giving live births, it never goes back to egg-laying.
If I could choose between live birth and egg laying, I’d be an egg layer. Just sayin’.
Parents in the Sitapur district of the Uttar Pradesh, a populous state in northern India, had their four year old daughter beaten, killed and burned in the hopes of becoming rich:
The couple, identified as Srikrishna and Ramdevi, were told by a “tantrik” (exorcist)that they would become rich if they sacrificed their daughter, according to police sources here.
Acting on the advice of a “tantrik”, a “havana kund”(a pit in which the fire is lit and yajna is performed), was prepared in the courtyard of the couple for the rituals late on Monday night.
The parents then put their daughter Kanni into the pit amid chanting of “mantra” and lit the fire. The girl, who was also mercillessely beaten, was half buried in the pit.
The parents had stuffed a piece of cloth in the mouth of the little girl so that her cries could not be heard by any one in the village, sources said.
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The reptiles are trying to confuse us by working towards 
Entropist: These idiots are wrong on so many different levels, its hard to... 
Just a Guy: Me an my wife have negotiated infidelity. Meaning she can be with other guys as long as she doesn’t hide... 
Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
DDM: Repubs and Dems. He’s saying they only take first impressions and... 
CM: Good point, most religions encourage having a lot of children. From an evolutionary standpoint you sort of owe it to your... 
Jasowah: “They don’t go beyond those emotions, and that’s the... 
