Awful ... or is that Offal?

Taking the already cheezy and adding a liberal dollop of additional cheez is guaranteed to create something truly hideous.

In the case below, some bunch of fundamentalists tried to make their own "Star Trek" episode, and the results speak for themselves. The original Star Trek episodes were deliberately cheezy, and few would claim that William Shatner was a great actor. Somehow, the fundies managed to "out cheez" the original Star Trek with a combination of awful acting, truly awful writing and a live audience providing the laugh track. (sadly, I don't think they were shooting for comedy - much less bad farce)



*You may want brain bleach with this or immediately after

Come to think of it, pulling in all of the usual fundagelical talking points about atheists and science and clubbing the audience to death with them probably doesn't help the story much either.

In compensation, I leave you with this sample of what can be done when fans with a bit of talent and dedication decide to "carry on" with the Star Trek theme:



h/t: Pam House Blend

Reading Too Much In

The recent release of the latest (and presumably last) Harry Potter novel has spawned all sorts of attempts at analysis which try to read far too much into a story that is pure escape literature.

While I can understand some degree of interest and curiousity being express with respect to what one can only describe as a societal phenomenon that has spanned the globe, we should be cautious about treating it as anything other than a pop culture moment. To apply much more than basic literary criticism to the Harry Potter books is granting what is obviously no deeper than your average Star Trek episode far too much intellectual credibility.

Perhaps the best example of the insanity that has come to surround the Harry Potter stories is expressed by Wingnut Daily, whose writers are getting themselves thoroughly tied up in knots over the dark evil of the "occult" in these books:

Wohlberg's new book "Exposing Harry Potter and Witchcraft: The Menace Beneath the Magic," asserts that "Harry Potter" purchases are often accompanied at the sales counter with materials on Wicca. Increasing numbers of young readers also frequent Wicca websites, cast "Love and Money Spells," and practice "white magic."

You know, I remember hearing those same kind of idiotic criticisms levelled at Dungeons and Dragons when I was in Junior High school. I think magic is something that many people find appealing, especially in adolescence. Who wouldn't give almost anything to make the pain and angst of our adolescent years go away (or turn that Math teacher that nobody could stand into a toad?)

Magic, at least on this world, isn't "real". Nobody accomplishes anything by incantations (at least that can be proven demonstrably) - whether those incantations are meant to boil a cauldron of water, or bring favor from some arbitrary sky-being.

Arguably, what many religions call prayer is little different from the ritualized casting of spells that many claim is an expression of "evil".

Many people I know scratch their heads and stare somewhat in askance at the near hysteria of the claims of the fundamentalists when they speak of Harry Potter (or Tolkein, or Dungeons and Dragons...). But, when you step back from it for a moment, it starts to make a little sense.

The fundamentalist claims that not only is "God" an absolute reality, but also that this same being had something to do with the writing of the Bible/Q'Ran/Pentateuch {pick your faith}. This grants a "reality" to an unknowable that is perhaps slightly irrational when framed in the context of our world. There is no way I can know the truth value of either claim, as they are statements of faith, not fact.

Looking a little further, it's not hard to see how if one accepts the claim that some meta being called "God" is real, that one might similarly be willing to believe that there is some "real" truth value to the kind of magic described in the Harry Potter books. Neither is demonstrable in any real sense in this world, but if you are willing to assign an absolute truth to one unknowable, credulity will similarly allow you to assume that magic is equally real.

More seriously, I think we have to ask ourselves if the hysteria around Harry Potter ultimately is about adults who have forgotten the imagination of youth, and the dalliances and explorations of those years between 11 and adulthood. Worrying that a piece of escape literature is exposing someone to evil is just plain silly - unless you happen to assign a reality to it that isn't really appropriate.

The Insanity's Leaking North

I see that Ken Ham's unique brand of evangelical insanity is creeping its way out of Kentucky and into Alberta.

For those not familiar with Ham, he started the creationist "Answers in Genesis" website/ministry, and is in process of opening a rather elaborate "Creation Science Museum" somewhere in Kentucky.

A few days ago, I heard part of an article about a "Creation Science" museum somewhere in Alberta being opened. Because I was still in the fog of sleep, I wasn't entirely sure what I'd heard, and left it alone until I had time to investigate further. Today, I was doing a bit of wandering about on the web, and I found that yes, Alberta is busy creating its very own "Creation Science Museum".

The website for them is here, and the Museum itself is somewhere in Big Valley, Alberta - a small town southwest of Red Deer.

Looking through the Alberta museum's claims about the material they are presenting is a glimpse into the fervent insanity of Young Earth Creationism.

Here are some of the more amusing gems:

The interactive bacterial flagellum and DNA displays both provide compelling evidence for creation and refute any unguided, 'natural' processes such as evolution.

Oh yes, resurrecting the already discredited theories of Michael J. Behe and the other ideologues that hang out with William Dembski over at the Discovery Institute. Brilliant, credible science to be referencing.

The "Age of the Earth" display is finished. This beautiful display packs a pile of leading-edge information regarding dating methods, fast fossils, rapid cave formations and Out of Place Artifacts.

Fast Fossils? There's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. Not to mention "rapid cave formations" - short of the kind of forces that plate tectonics involves (or small thermonuclear devices), caves are geological formations, and "rapid" in geological terms is something you can measure in a few thousand years.

The "Evidence From Geneaology" display, donated by Edgar Nurnberg, is one of the more favourite displays of our visitors. These scrolls from the Lambeth Palace in England trace the geneaology of King Henry the 6th back to Adam and Eve.

Uh-huh. I'll bet that these are just irrefutable evidence of the lineage of King Henry VI. Given the time period, King Henry may have commissioned those scrolls himself either to feed his ego or insanity.

The "Dinosaurs and Humans" display shows considerable evidence that not only did dinosaurs exist recently, but that humans existed with them. This evidence is fatal to the evolutionary dogma which has dinosaurs extinct at least 60 million years before humans evolved.

This is the classic rubric of the "Young Earther" arguments. Essentially, it's like claiming that the Flintstones was a documentary. The claim is, essentially, that Dinosaurs were wiped out in the "Great Flood" described in Genesis chapters 6 and 7.

While a "young earth creation" view may be a valid position of faith, it's a different thing altogether to try and twist the evidence that nearly several centuries of scientific inquiry has found that speaks otherwise.

Shorter Fundies: Have Sex, Get Cancer ... you deserve it

I simply cannot believe this piece of narrow-minded, asinine drivel.

Apparently, vaccinating young girls and women against HPV (a virus known to be causally related to cervical cancers) is somehow "giving them a license" to be "morally loose".

Beyond the sheer stupidity of the reasoning, I cannot believe that anyone would wish cancer upon someone else because they are "morally deficient" in the other person's view. I'm sorry - I've seen too many people die slow, painful deaths because of cancer, and none of them deserved it as people. (Does anyone deserve that kind of death?)

If the "right-to-life" crowd is so mean spirited as to wish our daughters to experience the trauma of cancer, then they are no more about life than the execution chamber in Texas.