How to spot a hidden religious agenda

[Iason Ouabache]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126975.800-how-to-spot-a-hidden-religious-agenda.html?DCMP=OTC-rss

Red flag number one: the term "scientific materialism". "Materialism" is most often used in contrast to something else - something non-material, or supernatural. Proponents of ID frequently lament the scientific claim that humans are the product of purely material forces. At the same time, they never define how non-material forces might work. I have yet to find a definition that characterises non-materialism by what it is, rather than by what it is not.

The invocation of Cartesian dualism  - where the brain and mind are viewed as two distinct entities, one material and the other immaterial - is also a red flag. And if an author describes the mind, or any biological system for that matter, as "irreducibly complex", let the alarm bells ring.

Misguided interpretations of quantum physics are a classic hallmark of pseudoscience, usually of the New Age variety, but some religious groups are now appealing to aspects of quantum weirdness to account for free will. Beware: this is nonsense.

When you come across the terms "Darwinism" or "Darwinists", take heed. True scientists rarely use these terms, and instead opt for "evolution" and "biologists", respectively. When evolution is described as a "blind, random, undirected process", be warned. While genetic mutations may be random, natural selection is not. When cells are described as "astonishingly complex molecular machines", it is generally by breathless supporters of ID who take the metaphor literally and assume that such a "machine" requires an "engineer". If an author wishes for "academic freedom", it is usually ID code for "the acceptance of creationism".

[Kai]

Those are all the things that throw my red flags up.

[Kai]

I just got an idea: what if I started throwing these words into my conversations just to fuck with people? 

[P3nT4gR4m]

I can usually tell by the face.

That and the fact that religious people tend to avoid me like they'd avoid an ebola-yeti

[Vene]

I just got an idea: what if I started throwing these words into my conversations just to fuck with people? 

Do it.

[LMNO]

Hell yes!

[Iason Ouabache]

BTW, Michael Egnor's most recent rant at the Discovery Institute manages to hit all of these except for the one about quantum physics. I guess he couldn't manage to fit it in. Plus there is the fact that his religious agenda isn't exactly hidden.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/03/an_open_letter_to_the_society_2.html

I especially loved this part:

If you're not careful, "creationists" (80% of Americans) might notice this irony: you boycott their states, but you forgot to boycott their money. If one percent of the people you've censored and boycotted wrote letters to their congressmen demanding a defunding of evolutionary research -- a boycott of you -- the grant money currently allocated to advancing Darwinist ideology (it's ideologues, not scientists, who censor) would be re-allocated to genuine non-ideological science.

That's right. Let's cut off all biological funding because it hurts your god's feelings. 

[Reginald Ret]

Kai, you have to! and i want to too, but ill need a list up my sleeve :P

[Pariah]

Biggest red flag for me:
Big Metal T's

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What does the T stand for, anyway? Anybody know?

[GPBennessimoMFBA]

I think the lower case t is short for trash, that or its a symbol derived from the act of shitting from the mouth.

[Jasper]

I'm so out of touch with slang that I can't tell if you guys are tongue in cheek or serious.

[GPBennessimoMFBA]

The tongue never leaves the cheek. thatsth why I shlurr all the time. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

Biggest red flag for me:
Big Metal T's

I have been known to wear big metal T's from time to time. They are useful for putting faithfools at ease which helps facilitate the whole - looking terribly upset and or running away screaming - spectacle which, after all, is the sole reason their god put the fuckers on my planet in the first place.

[Kai]

Oh, PLEASE, CUT FUNDING. Yes yes, see, this is how I want it to go.

I want them to get a taste of their own medicine, and by medicine I mean leeches and bloodletting.

Those fuckers. The next time a fundie starts trying to jab to me I'm gonna ask "enjoying your pre-19th century alchemic "medicine"?" Cause they deserve that, honestly.

In fact, I want to spam the DI with letters about that. Fuck them. Fuck them all.