While my daughter was, in turn, waiting for my wife and I to finish our important “tasks,” she grabbed some paper and colored pencils and wrote and illustrated a four-page book. Though the book doesn’t show off her graphic artistry (she can do much better), when I read the book, I was delighted… and proud. Here’s the book (click to embiggen).

Title Page	Page 1
Page 2	Page 3

Now, of course she doesn’t know everything, but if you’re going to learn everything, history and science are pretty good starting points. This creation of hers happened without any prompting on my part tonight, so I was especially pleased that she felt it was a cool enough topic to illustrate… in the 10 or 15 minutes she was waiting! She read it to me and my laptop and NCIS got ignored from that point.

I think my laptop is still prompting me to click “Next.”

When I got to the checkout counter, the woman ringing me up paused briefly to look at 50 Reasons and then paused longer to look at the cover when she was bagging my items. I smiled and said, "That one seems to fascinate you, huh?"

She looked up and smiled and said (a bit tentatively), "Yeah. I’m kind of an agnostic. You know, I could go either way. The books in the religion section can be pretty interesting."

I nodded in agreement and simply said, "I’m an atheist."

The reaction was priceless. Her whole face lit up and she said, "Oh, our atheist section has some really great books! The God Delusion and The Portable Atheist… I haven’t read those yet, but I’ve read some of the others."

I told her that The God Delusion was, indeed, very good and that The Portable Atheist was a huge collection of essays, also very good. I think she mentioned one other book in the atheist section, but I don’t recall which one. It was as if she’d found a kindred spirit. Her statement about agnosticism was very tentative and casual, something a disinterested person would have just said "Oh" to, but after I said I was an atheist, she very nearly gushed with enthusiasm.

It was refreshing… and heartening.

The abundance of Christian books at a bargain outlet got me wondering. Are the proprietors of Ollie’s religious folks? Are Christian books notoriously hard to sell and wind up in the bargain bin because of it? Are Christian bookstores going out of business because they can’t compete with the big chains like Borders and Barnes and Noble? I don’t know the answer, but the situation is the same at both Ollie’s stores in my area.

It turned out for the best because I picked up a Max Lucado book for 99 cents.

It’s a perfect gag gift for Craig.

He said, “Man… isn’t that horse deader than SeaBiscuit?”

I replied that sadly, it was not.

He said, “Maybe it got resurrected. It died, lay in a cave for three days, and then came back out.”

Laughter ensued.

What I found blog-worthy tonight was a writeup by Lee Duigon on The Chalcedon Foundation’s website. Mr. Duigon focuses mostly on the branding issue, which is fair since that is one of the accusations levied against Freshwater. He starts by showing some early reactions from a number of sources about the branding issue and they (as one would expect, sadly) over-react in a grand fashion based on little evidence. Assuming Mr. Duigon is disgusted by this type of “string him up” reaction, I share his disgust.

I don’t have all the facts of the case. Nobody does at this point and the case is still ongoing. However, based on Freshwater’s reputation, my guess would be that he’s a good guy and probably a good teacher and there isn’t really any kind of underhanded conspiracy that he’s heading up to delude students. I don’t agree with teaching creationism (or intelligent design… same thing) in a science class, but I doubt Freshwater is any kind of monster.

However, there is some side commentary in Mr. Duigon’s article that shows a lack of understanding about science and the scientific process.

The high school superintendent, Steve Short, said in a formal statement, “The Mount Vernon Schools has not taken this action because it opposes religion but because it has an obligation under the First Amendment to protect against the establishment of religion in the schools. As a public school system, the district cannot teach, promote, or favor any religion or religious beliefs.”

Mr. Duigon’s response?

But of course it does: it promotes the Godless religion of secular humanism, whose scriptures include the works of Charles Darwin. Steve Short—whose eldest son is a worship minister in Kentucky and whose youngest son is studying to be a pastor—knows this.

Asked if Darwin’s Origin of the Species is a religious text, Short answered, “Sure it is.”

That, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, is a load of bunk. Perhaps Mr. Duigon doesn’t understand what “secular humanism” is. Perhaps he doesn’t understand what “scripture” is. Perhaps he doesn’t understand what a “religious text” is. Perhaps he considers science to be anti-Christian. Perhaps he feels somewhat smug that Superintendent Short seems to misunderstand Darwin’s book. Perhaps he thinks that not teaching the Bible’s version of reality is equivalent to promoting the “Godless religion of secular humanism.”

He certainly has no concept of what constitutes a scientific theory or of what the scientific process is. If he did, he would understand his comments about Freshwater having “challenged the concept of evolution” is not a bad thing. The scientific community challenges it every day… as they do with most other scientific theories. That’s the whole purpose of the scientific process. Intelligently challenging existing theories is a good, commendable act and is encouraged by scientists (note “Intelligently”).

Now it’s true that Mr. Duigon is claiming that Freshwater was fired because he challenged the theory of evolution (which he continually refers to as the concept of evolution) and that his “Darwinist colleagues” couldn’t handle it. Again, the facts are not all in and the case is not finalized, but while I can easily see some teachers sighing with exasperation at another teacher’s failure to “stay within the lines,” my guess is that their real problem wouldn’t be the challenging of evolutionary theory. It would be the challenging of evolutionary theory by proposing that creationism/intelligent design is some sort of alternate scientific explanation.

It’s been pretty firmly established in both the courts and in reputable scientific circles (read “not the Discovery Institute”) that there is nothing scientific about intelligent design or creationism. Intelligent design has nothing to base itself on other than its weak and failed attempts to discredit the theory of evolution. There is no science backing up its premise. Add to that the fact that, even if evolutionary theory didn’t even exist, it wouldn’t mean that intelligent design is correct by default. It’s just nonsense.

Bunk, if you will.

Here’s the gist of the email.

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is: The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal…. the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

Read the Snopes post for the full debunking, but there are a few points I want to reiterate here.

The actual chapter in the Bible is called “The Book of Revelation.” It’s not “Revelations” (plural). So from the first sentence, anyone who is a Biblical scholar should be at least skeptical.

What the big point is, however, is that the Book of Revelation says none of those things about the Anti-Christ. It doesn’t even use the term “Anti-Christ” at all. The Anti-Christ is mentioned a few other times in different books of the Bible, but they don’t call out specific identifying details.

So there’s no mention of a man in his 40’s of Muslim descent or is there a mention of a person with persuasive language or “Christ-like appeal.”

However, here’s the real kicker to debunk the email. The Book of Revelation was completed before the end of the second century… but Islam didn’t begin until 400 years later, so the word “Muslim” couldn’t have been used because it wasn’t even a word when the Book of Revelation was written. Go figure.

Now… all that aside, the whole email is irrational silliness from the get-go because it’s based on text from the Bible. Unless you’re talking about the Bible, literary works based on the Bible, or religions based on the Bible, using quotes from the Bible as evidence is an automatic disqualifier.

Hitler was NOT an atheist.

Where to begin? How about Hitler’s own book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle); A pathetic, bigoted, psychotic meandering of a tome.

In chapter 2, Hitler writes,

In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events which happened in the middle ages came into my mind, and I felt that I should not like to see them repeated.

Hitler mentions a “different” faith. That would seem to indicate that he had a “faith”.  Not enough proof? Here is a quote from his speech given in Munich, dated April 12, 1922.

In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before – the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago – a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

Holy mother of all that is Christian, Batman. I think that quote says it all. 

But wait, say you! Hitler was one of those filthy Darwinists!! Not so much. The Darwinian view that some people reference was Hitler’s total misinterpretation of Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory. Hitler, along with others in his party, tried to apply this belief in a social context. Hitler’s understanding and application of Darwinian theories was rudimentary and fragmented at best.

The truth of the matter is that, Hitler did not cause the death of millions of people because he was an atheist or a Christian. Hitler caused the death of millions of people because he was a bigoted, twisted, anti-semitic, imbecilic simpleton. His actions were neither rooted in theism or anti-theism. They were rooted solely in a maniacal claim of racial superiority, period.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

I couldn’t agree more. When critical thinking and scientific know-how give way to complacent acceptance of unverified (or unverifiable) declaratory statements, whether they be dogmatic or not, human existence starts to lose its luster.