Blue Collar Scientist

Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern, a Republican, has said that homosexuals are a bigger threat to the United States than “terrorism or Islam.” I’m sure by now we’ve all seen this:

When called out on this outrage, she refused to apologize, suggested the person who had taped her speech had done something wrong, and asserted she had first amendment rights.

She does have first amendment rights, of course. Just like I have first amendment rights. And I’m gonna use mine to call Sally Kern a despicable anti-American jackass.

Elyse at Skepchick has pointed out in a graphical way that there is a significant difference between what terrorists do, and what homosexuals do, and she’s recommended the rest of us follow suit. I will do so gladly.

Here’s the gay sex:

Here’s the terrorists:

Is the distinction really that subtle?

Writerdd over on Skepchick, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers, has some remarks about non-fundamentalist religion:

In comments on another post a few weeks ago, I questioned the idea of criticizing Christians for “cherry picking the Bible” — that is, ignoring the parts they find abhorrent and clinging to the parts they find inspirational…. Ignoring parts of the Bible or Koran should not be ridiculed. It is a good thing that leads away from fanatical violence. We should be encouraging this type of behavior.

I agree, utterly and completely.

The fact is, sensible people will read parts of the Bible and correctly discern that it isn’t a science textbook. In a recent TV interview on the evolution wars, I said that a person reading the first four chapters of Genesis as a story that tells us about human nature - our curiosity, our response to authority, etc - has done a sensible thing. Not as sensible, perhaps, as studying psychology, but they’ve at least read the text and learned from it the things that I think the author was trying to teach. Somewhat more discerning people might read the same text and recognize that it is also a slap in the face to prevailing political and religious institutions in contemporary Babylon - and if so, they’ve done an excellent job of interpreting the text.

Readers who decide those chapters are an anatomy lesson and come to the conclusion that men have fewer ribs than women¹ have made a fundamental error about the scope of the text. As have those who believe that it is a textbook for science and/or history. If someone reads the first four chapters of Genesis and still thinks that men and women have the same number of ribs, does it make them an infidel,² or somehow not-really-Christian³?

Ummm, no, it makes them more sensible than their peers.

In doing the science/skepticism educational activities I’m neck-deep in, I have to communicate with forthrightly religious people all the time. The sensible ones, who lack fundamentalist impulses, have no difficulty grappling with the reality that is demonstrated by experiment. And lest we body-check them for nevertheless believing in god, let’s keep in mind that all but the superheroes among us believe something that isn’t true⁴.

Dialogues often develop between fundamentalists and less strident religionists in the class discussions that I lead, and my conclusion from these experiences is that I want more of the latter in my world. They are simply much less prone - no, let’s say, not prone at all - to condemning me to a violent end for “believing in” the Big Bang Theory, and shutting out everything I have to say simply because my beliefs aren’t the same as theirs. What’s disturbing about that is my “beliefs” are never aired - they just assume the person they are dealing with is a minion of Satan. As writerdd notes, there is a big gulf in social adjustment between these two populations.

And that is why I distinguish between religious extremists, and everyone else. (Well, that, and because the term marginalizes extremists.)

1. This is a belief I have actually encountered in the wild. [↩]
2. From the perspective of fundamentalist Christians. [↩]
3. From the perspective of an atheist or adherent to another religion. [↩]
4. That’s actually the most humbling thing about doing science - finding out that your view of reality is seriously messed up, over and over again. [↩]

I just learned from Denialism Blog that terrorists have set fire to a UCLA professor’s house. An LA Times story (registration required) reports that some sort of incendiary device set the house aflame:

The device was placed Monday morning (February 4) on the front porch of a Westside house owned by Edythe London, FBI officials in Los Angeles said.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed that officials with the Joint Terrorism Task Force were investigating the incident.

“It was ignited and caused damage to the property,” Eimiller said. “No one was home at the time and nobody was hurt.”

Eimiller said no one had claimed responsibility. But the agency is investigating the allegation that the Animal Liberation Front used a garden hose to flood London’s house Oct. 20 in an attempt to stop her animal experiments.

The victim, Edythe London, is a researcher at UCLA who studies addiction to nicotine, methamphetamine, and alcohol. Her research has resulted in a better understanding of addiction, and better treatments to help people addicted to drugs to recover, and subsequently live better, more productive lives. Although this has helped drug abusers - and their primary victims, their families and communities - the research has helped millions more. London has developed new ways to study brain function, and almost anyone with a head injury, neurological disease, or learning disability has befitted in one way or another from London’s twenty or so years of research.

“Animal-rights” terrorists want to kill her because some of her work involves the use of lab monkeys. They’ve already successfully attacked her house once, doing $20,000 to $30,000 worth of damage by flooding it. The terrorists who claimed credit for doing that, calling themselves the Animal Liberation Front, said at the time they they were torn between flooding the house and burning it down.

Now they have come back, and since vandalism didn’t work, they’re trying to kill her.

She looks like a huge threat, doesn’t she? Why, just by looking at her, you can tell that she’s evil, fire-breathing spawn of demons.¹ And obviously any attractive middle-aged women named Edyth must be at the root of the collapse of civilization.

London has written about why she uses animals in some of her research. It is a thoughtful explanation of her opinions. This gentle, peaceful explanation of the subject is answered with violence. Her opponents can’t be bothered to put forth a vigorous argument in response - they have to try to kill those who disagree with them.

The people who want her dead have put her home address on a public website, disguising their intent by claiming they just want to distribute flyers in her neighborhood. If this is all they wanted to do, they could just disclose which city block she lives on. Instead, they publish the house number. The intent is clear enough - they want to target her specifically. They want to intimidate her by letting her know that any crackpot who wants to believe they are doing God’s work by killing someone can find her easily.

They have also taken quotations from her research papers out of context and reproduced them in a misleading way. No doubt this serves to fire up their fellow-travellers, and makes it seem as though their violent and deadly actions are somehow justified.

That, incidentally, is the typical tactic of all antiscience malcontents. I’m not sure it is actually possible to oppose science by telling the truth. So the socially maladjusted just make stuff up and pretend that what they say has something to do with reality. In this particular case, if they get what they want they will halt all progress in understanding biology and medicine. And not just by killing all the the researchers, although I’m sure they’d find that good sport - but by banning all research.

I recently commented on the skepchick blog about how to recognize an extremist:

The way that you know that you are dealing with a minority extremist sect of a larger movement is that the larger movement works to morally condemn and limit the influence of the minority sect.

I’m concerned that the violent are the mainstream in the so-called “animal rights” movement. A simple google search turns up not a single example of an animal rights activist condemning this attempted killing of a woman, their family, and depending on how well their IEDs work, her neighbors.

1. If you don’t get this, please look up the definition of sarcasm. [↩]