Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1907

Even More Church/State Violations Uncovered in Texas School District; Is Anyone There Trying to Fix the Problems?

A few weeks ago, I posted about the numerous church/state violations taking place at China Elementary in Texas’ Hardin-Jefferson Independent School District.

Just to offer some quick examples, the school’s Facebook page was full of mentions of the teacher-led “Hawks for Christ” group, not to mention pictures of teachers wearing club shirts — both of which are illegal:

Obviously, the concern here was that the kids would think their school was promoting Christianity, and that’s why it crossed the line. No one’s saying the kids or teachers can’t pray on their own time.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to district officials describing a few of the (many, many) problems at this school, and the school district finally took some action last week… by shutting down the Facebook page.

That’s it. That’s all they did.

It made as much sense as closing your blinds so your neighbors can’t see how dirty your house is. It didn’t fix the actual problem; it just made them look even more guilty than before.

Yesterday, FFRF sent the district another letter documenting even more illegal church/state violations in the district. While some of them were known earlier, one of them is brand new.

In fact, just days after the FFRF’s first letter was sent out, the principal and two teachers sent a letter to parents urging them to pray for the district and the religious groups. They also said an upcoming Hawks for Christ meeting would be student-led but urged parents to encourage their kids to attend and share scripture. Finally, they admitted staff members would be working to make sure there were no speaker conflicts.

A reader-submitted image. Ignore the misspelling at the bottom!

FFRF attorney Sam Grover writes:

The duties being taken on by these District employees… are exactly the duties that students are required to perform in a student-run club. If China Elementary students are unable to adequately organize and advertise for their own club meetings, then they are too young to be running a club. That is not an excuse to have District staff run the club for the students. The club simply cannot exist.

Of course that’s not the only violation.

There are Christian crosses on classroom walls…

… and the district allows students to recite a prayer over the public address system before football games, in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling.

Oh, and this is the Hardin-Jefferson School Song:

Ever loyal to old H-J all the livelong day, she’s better than the rest, just watch us fight, Oh, say, oh yes, we’re fighting. For, we’re loyal to old H-J, grand old team have we. Fight fellows, fight, fight, fight and win the victory. (slower and softer) And when the year is over, God bless our school, we’ve done our best to mind the golden rule. We are always rooting, as you all know. For old H-J High School, we love you so.

This district is just ridiculous. Any one of these violations would have warranted a complaint letter, but this many in one place? Completely inappropriate.

And we haven’t seen seen what their science classes look like…

(Large portions of this article were published earlier)

Catholic Diocese in Minnesota May File for Bankruptcy Due to Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Against Its Priests

In documents released this week, Bishop John Quinn said that the Catholic Diocese of Winona (Minnesota) may go into bankruptcy depending on how many people sue them for past sexual abuse cases. The “problem” stems from a state law that allows victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits against the criminals even if the incidents took place a long time ago. The window to file suits for old cases doesn’t close until the middle of 2016:

The Winona diocese “has received several claims of negligence upon other offenders since the statute’s inception, anticipates several more, and anticipates eventually bankruptcy as a result of these lawsuits,” Quinn wrote [in a letter to the Vatican].

“Both attorneys and elements within the public media have exhibited unwavering resolve in their efforts to further defame alleged offenders, foster discredit in church officials, and instill common anger and mistrust toward the Universal Church,” he added.

…

Diocese spokesman Joel Hennessy said the diocese hasn’t decided whether to file for bankruptcy because it’s unclear how many people may sue in the remaining 21 months the law allows.

Riiiight. All these lawsuits are being filed because people just hate the Church, not because the priests involved did anything wrong.

Shouldn’t it be more disturbing that they don’t even know whether bankruptcy is in their future because there’s no telling how many victims will come forward?

This letter, by the way, was one of many documents that came to light only recently because of an ongoing lawsuit against Rev. Thomas Adamson. (You may remember that Adamson’s boss at the time, Bishop Robert J. Carlson, said in a deposition earlier this summer that he wasn’t sure whether raping a child was a crime back in the 70s.)

The Winona diocese, if it filed for bankruptcy, would be the tenth such diocese to do so. And it’s not what attorney Jeff Anderson wants for his clients:

“It would be disturbing if that’s the first choice they make, instead of trying to reach out to the survivors and say, ‘Let us try to do the right thing with what we have and the insurance with have,’ Anderson said. “If they go to that route without trying to work with us, it will just be another legal maneuver to avoid transparency and accountability.”

Even with bankruptcy, victims would be able to file claims against the Church, but there’s no telling what they would get even if successful.

Nicholas Kristof Elaborates on the Diversity of Islam but Still Misses the Point

In his New York Times column today, Nicholas Kristof expands on the controversial panel discussion he was a part of on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. He and Ben Affleck (though mostly Affleck) argued that criticism of Islam was unfair, “gross,” and “racist,” while Maher and Sam Harris made the case that radical ideas were not confined to some small fringe of Muslims.

The bulk of Kristof’s argument boils down to this:

… the Islamic world contains multitudes: It is vast and varied. Yes, almost four out of five Afghans favor the death penalty for apostasy, but most Muslims say that that is nuts. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, only 16 percent of Muslims favor such a penalty. In Albania, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, only 2 percent or fewer Muslims favor it, according to the Pew survey.

Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling.

But no one, including Harris, is saying that all Muslims (or even the vast majority of them) hold these barbaric views. But when Kristof says “most Muslims say that [the death penalty for apostasy] is nuts,” that word “most” becomes critical. There’s a huge difference between, say, 60% of Muslims condemning the idea versus 99% of them doing so. In fact, outside of the U.S., it’s hardly just a handful of radicals we’re talking about:

Yes, there’s more going on on those countries than just “bad religion,” but it’s foolish to think Islam has nothing to do with it.

Kristof goes on to educate us in the obvious:

Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. The Dalai Lama today is an extraordinary humanitarian, but the fifth Dalai Lama in 1660 ordered children massacred “like eggs smashed against rocks.”

Christianity encompassed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also the 13th century papal legate who in France ordered the massacre of 20,000 Cathar men, women and children for heresy, reportedly saying: Kill them all; God will know his own.

Of course all religions are full of both wonderful and despicable followers. If we could somehow know the percentages of each, though, I suspect they would be wildly different depending on the faith.

That’s the unfortunate truth that Kristof and Affleck and those in their camp refuse to admit.

Of course there are courageous Muslims, like Malala Yousafzai. I can’t imagine how any decent person wouldn’t support her cause despite any differences in theology. But when she’s fighting people with awful beliefs who won’t budge on them because they stem from a holy book, that battle becomes much more difficult to wage.

Ali A. Rizvi put this well in his open letter to moderate Muslims the other day:

If any kind of literature is to be interpreted “metaphorically,” it has to at least represent the original idea. Metaphors are meant to illustrate and clarify ideas, not twist and obscure them. When the literal words speak of blatant violence but are claimed to really mean peace and unity, we’re not in interpretation/metaphor zone anymore; we’re heading into distortion/misrepresentation territory. If this disconnect was limited to one or two verses, I would consider your argument. If your interpretation were accepted by all of the world’s Muslims, I would consider your argument. Unfortunately, neither of these is the case.

…

You condemn all kinds of terrible things being done in the name of your religion, but when the same things appear as verses in your book, you use all your faculties to defend them. This comes across as either denial or disingenuousness, both of which make an honest conversation impossible.

There’s no doubt that culture and politics and rigid dogmatic thinking of all sorts play important roles in these majority-Muslim countries. But it seems very disingenuous for anyone to claim that Islam itself isn’t a potent ingredient in the mix. I also believe that if the Koran didn’t include all the violent verses that it does, it would be much easier for these countries to see the kind of reform sought by brave, moderate Muslims.

It’s not “Islamophobic bigotry” (Kristof’s words) to point all of this out. Sam Harris said as much in his own essay reflecting on the panel discussion:

My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences — but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people.

…

Kristof made the point that there are brave Muslims who are risking their lives to condemn “extremism” in the Muslim community. Of course there are, and I celebrate these people too. But he seemed completely unaware that he was making my point for me — the point being, of course, that these people are now risking their lives by advocating for basic human rights in the Muslim world.

…

… I don’t know how many times one must deny that one is referring to an entire group, or cite specific poll results to justify the percentages one is talking about, but no amount of clarification appears sufficient to forestall charges of bigotry and lack of “nuance.”

…

I genuinely believe that both Affleck and Kristof mean well. They are very worried about American xenophobia and the prospects of future military adventures. But they are confused about Islam. Like many secular liberals, they refuse to accept the abundant evidence that vast numbers of Muslims believe dangerous things about infidels, apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, and martyrdom. And they do not realize that these doctrines are about as controversial under Islam as the resurrection of Jesus is under Christianity.

Just to add to that last sentence, because the point must be made: That’s not to say all Muslims support those ideas, only that those ideas can be justified with the Koran and many, many Muslims believe that to be the case.

I know I’ve posted this before, but it won’t hurt to post it again. It’s an image from the Pew Research Center’s survey on Muslims worldwide:

Yes, most Muslims around the world condemn violence in defense of their faith. But when you exclude those who didn’t respond to the question, we’re still talking about 21% of Muslims worldwide and 13% in the U.S. who believe suicide bombing is rarely, sometimes, or often justified. That’s hundreds of millions of people who do not unequivocally condemn faith-based violence.

Unless we can admit that religion is at least part of the problem here, I don’t know how we can fix the problems in these countries. The greatest threat to moderate Muslims aren’t liberals like Sam Harris supposedly painting them with a broad brush; it’s other Muslims who believe the moderates’ interpretation of the Koran is both incorrect and blasphemous.

Homeopathic Battleship is the Hardest Game Ever…

Take regular Battleship, with it’s ratio of 17 ship squares out of 100 total squares… and homeopathize it so that there’s only 1 ship square out of 100,000,000,000 total squares.

That’s Homeopathic Battleship.

I haven’t won yet.

Must keep playing until I win…

(via Morning Heresy)

This is Why You Shouldn’t Say the Pledge of Allegiance in School

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses why you shouldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in school:

A rough transcript of the video can be found on the YouTube page in the “About” section.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Does New Research Prove Life After Death? Not So Much…

Holy Moses, the afterlife is real! At least, that’s the impression you might get reading about the “AWARE” study (recently published in the Resuscitation Journal). The Telegraph‘s headline, for instance, trumpets, “First hint of ‘life after death’ in biggest ever scientific study.”

This is followed by a far less exciting, but more accurate, description:

Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible

The study focused on cardiac arrest patients. Of 330 survivors (of an initial pool of 2060), 140 recounted some level of “awareness while being resuscitated” following cessation of cardiac activity. Lead researcher, Dr. Sam Parnia, believes actual numbers of near-death experiences might in fact be much higher, but brain injury or sedatives might limit later recollection. Of reported experiences, however, researchers identified several distinct themes.

The experiences manifested in somewhat contradictory fashion from person to person, ranging from a “sense of peacefulness” to heightened senses. A third of the patients recalled time either slowing down or speeding up; some claimed to see bright light or the sun, but others “recounted feelings of fear or drowning or being dragged through deep water.” Some patients “said they felt separated from their bodies”; one account in particular seems to have stood out to Parnia.

A 57-year old Southampton man went into cardiac arrest prior to being resuscitated. After the fact, he described in detail the actions of those who resuscitated him and the noise of one of the hospital machines.

“We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia… “But in this case, conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped.”

And where did this figure of three minutes of post-death consciousness come from?

“The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals. So we could time how long the experienced lasted for.

“He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”

Two points come immediately to mind. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable; it is doubtful that being at the center of a traumatic incident — your own death — would improve matters. It is, therefore, fully possible that the patient involved is absolutely convinced that two beeps occurred during his death (making what he claims to have experienced very credible)… yet is still wrong. There is, it seems to me, some reason to be skeptical about the time frame put forth. Secondly, even if the three minute time frame is accurate, this indicates that consciousness can linger at least two and a half minutes longer than previously indicated; that an afterlife exists is another matter entirely.

This is what the study says are indications that “consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness.” It may well be that our methods of determining human consciousness are not fully accurate and that human consciousness continues for some time longer than currently thought. But it’s important to note that this study hasn’t proven that — nor do the researchers involved claim that it has — much less that there is no termination to consciousness.

A better understanding of human consciousness’ limits is to be desired for any number of reasons. But jumping to the conclusion that dying memories are somehow indicative of a life after death is simply unwarranted based on what (little) we know. It might make for eye-catching headlines, but there is no rational basis to doing so.

Tennessee School District Considers Prayers at Board Meetings, Despite Knowing They’re Illegal

The Williamson County Board of Education in Tennessee want to begin meetings with prayer, which they can’t do since a school board (which oversees students specifically) isn’t the same as a city council. A school board prayer is usually seen by the courts as no different from a teacher or principal leading prayer in a classroom — there’s a coercion factor that comes into play.

What’s more, the board members in Williamson County know prayers would be illegal, and yet they still want to have them:

Board members said they don’t know what type of prayers they would cover or how many they would recite at each meeting.

[Board member Kenneth] Peterson said the board already anticipates challenges.

“Certainly there’s a law against having prayer before school board meetings, so that’s at the top of the concerns,” Peterson said.

That’s a great line, isn’t it? We know this is illegal, so that’s in the back of our minds as we consider doing it, anyway.

The board isn’t close to voting on these prayers yet, but parents in the district should keep a couple of things in mind: If board members vote to have prayers, not only should they expect a lawsuit to be filed against the district (using up resources that should be benefitting students), but they should know that I’ll do everything I can to make sure local atheists, Pagans, Satanists, Muslims, and all other non-Christians are aware of the policy so that they can sign up to deliver the invocations.

Because it’d be downright hilarious to watch the board members squirm as they listen to something like this:

(Thanks to Eddie for the link)

Reli-Fraud Is Under-Discussed and Under-Reported in Churches; Ephren Taylor’s Jesus Scam

How do religious shysters build entire financial empires? Why do they get away with running obvious Ponzi schemes for years on end, while no one appears to ask them any hard questions?

Cathy Lerman, a Florida lawyer who is representing several victims of religious fraudster Ephren Taylor (sometimes dubbed “the black Bernie Madoff”), offers at least part of the answer:

“Religious-affinity fraud is quite common, but it’s not discussed inside the church, and that’s one of the problems. No one wants to admit that it occurs, and that’s how [Taylor] did this for so long. A lot of these people were ashamed, or they felt from a religious standpoint that what happens in the church stays in the church, and you don’t go telling anybody and you don’t have him arrested and you don’t do anything.”

“Who would dream that someone would come into your church and use your faith as a weapon to steal?” said Lerman. “All of them believed that they were the only ones; they thought they had been stupid.”

From 2007 to 2010, Taylor gave “Wealth Tour Live” seminars in churches around the country.

Initially, Taylor’s appeal was obvious. Marketing himself as the “youngest black CEO of a publicly traded company,” Taylor claimed to have founded two tech companies — and made his first million — before graduating from high school. He promised “low-risk, high-reward” investment opportunities that would “show you how to get wealth and use it for the building of His Kingdom,” as he told a congregation in 2009.

In sermons, and later with infomercials, books, and webinars, Taylor would rev up the flock, quoting scripture, exalting Jesus, and sprinkling vague promises of “economic empowerment” and “attainable housing” with disparaging remarks about traditional investment vehicles like stock markets and mutual funds. The audience, he claimed, would be better off “firing their brokers” and buying into one of Taylor’s “no-risk sweepstakes machines” — or, better yet, transferring their money (all of it, ideally) into self-directed IRA custodial accounts, which Taylor’s company City Capital Corporation would then invest in inner-city businesses.

Congregations, including powerful megachurches like New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta and Joel Osteen’s behemoth Lakewood Church in Houston, ate it up, opening their doors — and wallets — to the black Elmer Gantry of the new millennium.

The man was arrested in June and faces many years behind bars. The Justice Department alleges that Taylor took in some five million dollars, always chasing new money which he used to cover his losses — that is, when he wasn’t busy secretly investing it into his wife’s fledgling career as a pop star, Kong Hee style. The Securities and Exchange Commission thinks that five million is too low an estimate and believes that Taylor defrauded his marks to the tune of 11 million dollars.

Like his followers, the media declined to prick his bubble (with some exceptions) — they eagerly inflated it. Writes Vice‘s Grace Wyler:

[H]is deception extended far beyond the tight circles of predominantly African American Evangelicals he targeted with his investment schemes. Taylor was profiled by CNN, Forbes, and NPR and appeared in a CNBC segment titled “Secrets of a Teen Millionaire.” Montel Williams had him on as a guest. Taylor even claimed Snoop Dogg had hired him to manage his philanthropic youth foundation, the Snoop Youth Football League. And in 2008, Taylor gave a seminar on socially conscious investment at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

With scammers’ messages so amplified, religious groups are especially gullible vulnerable.

[S]tate and federal officials have warned that about half of fraud schemes are affinity-based, accounting for anywhere between $20 billion and $50 billion in investor losses in the last decade…

Researchers at the Center for Study in Global Christianity, which examines church fraud and embezzlement, found that ecclesiastical crime accounted for $37 billion in losses for churches worldwide last year. In the US, Alabama Securities Commissioner Joseph Borg estimates that faith-based fraud accounts for about half of all affinity schemes in the South…

“It’s a big hurdle to overcome,” said Borg. “If you can’t trust your church, you can’t trust the members of your church, you can’t trust the leaders of your church, who can you trust?”

If that last sentiment is meant to refer to the basic trustworthiness of those who sell their wares dipped in Jesus juice, not even the good commissioner would seem immune to Ephren Taylor and his ilk.

(Image via Shutterstock)

This Ignorant Christian Parent Misunderstood Her Child’s History Homework and Caused a Stir Online

When I was teaching math — let’s say it was trigonometry — I always tried to put a question on the unit test that looked like this:

Explain to an intelligent 8-year-old why the value of sine can never be greater than 1.

In other words, could you explain what “sine” meant using basic terminology in a simple, straightforward way?* I could always tell from their responses who really understood the material and who was just regurgitating something out of a textbook.

So when a high school history teacher at Jenison High School in Michigan was discussing world religions and asked his students to “introduce Islam to 3rd graders,” I knew exactly what he meant. He wanted the students to design a pamphlet about Islam that just covered the basics.

Obviously.

Mother Jennette Hall couldn’t figure that one out. She assumed her child was being told to preach Islam to eight-year-olds. And instead of asking the teacher to clarify the assignment, she just posted a single page of the assignment on Facebook, where gullible conservatives shared it and made it go viral.

Principal Brandon Graham said that was a complete misunderstanding of the assignment:

Graham explained that the high school students’ work would not be given to any younger students. “I have a third grade son in the district myself, and this was the farthest thing from being introduced to third graders,” said Graham.

While Hall’s original posts have been deleted (at the principal’s request), it’s clear she still doesn’t get the assignment:

This assignment upset me because they are presenting Allah as the same God of the Christians and Jews. This paper, in my opinion, is promoting Islam by describing Allahs names as ‘beautiful’. To me this is not simply factual like it should be. I have a meeting on Tuesday with the principle of Jenison High School to discuss my concerns.

*sigh*

It is factual in the sense that Muslims believe Allah is beautiful. Just like Muslims believe what the Koran says. Just like Christians (say they) take the Bible seriously.

A day later, Hall still hadn’t fully figured it out.

I was SHOCKED when my daughter showed me the pamphlet that she was required to make promoting Islam in a way 3rd graders could comprehend. As a mother who teaches her children that the One True Creator God is the GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it made me sick to my stomach to see my daughter promoting another god (Allah) as the One True Creator on a pamphlet! Islam was the ONLY religion of the 4 studied so far that was given the assignment to create a pamphlet. [Hemant says: Maybe that's because the unit wasn't finished yet.]

Is this World History class promoting one religion over another by requiring a pamphlet to be made only for the Islamic religion and not the others? After consulting with the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice) today, they informed me that if the school is promoting one religion over the other then they would be in violation of the 1st amendment. Will Jenison Public Schools consider self-correcting the issue by assigning a traditional quiz for Islam, as they did for the other religions studied, instead of a pamphlet?

Yesterday, after her meeting, Hall still hadn’t fully figured it out… but now school officials were humoring her:

In the meeting, Dr. Brandon Graham and others in attendance carefully listened to my concerns and are considering making some changes. One change discussed was adding a disclaimer on the Introducing Islam packet stating: “this is what the Islam religion believes”, and also the ‘PAMPHLET’ assignment will be discussed when they do their annual re-evaluation of assignments for next year.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when she left the meeting and everyone else in the room laughed their asses off…

(The principal attempted some damage control on Facebook and a local news station, though it’s unclear how successful he was.)

The moral of the story: Parents who don’t understand their children’s assignments should try talking to the teachers before they make asses of themselves online.

There’s nothing wrong with teaching the major world religions. It’s important for students to have a working understanding of the beliefs that motivate billions of people worldwide. No one’s saying they have to accept any of them. Had Hall just contacted the teacher to begin with, her confusion would’ve been cleared up quickly.

…

*I was hoping they’d say something like:

Sine is the ratio of one leg of a right triangle to the hypotenuse… and since the hypotenuse is the longest side, the ratio can’t be greater than 1.

(Thanks to Julie for the link)

Creationists May Have Given Up More Than $18,000,000 in Tax Rebates Because They Want to Discriminate in Hiring

Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham‘s ministry, is a religious non-profit. That’s why the Creation Museum can require you to sign a “statement of faith” if you want to work there.

Ark Encounter, the Noah’s Ark theme park that’s eligible for millions of dollars in tax rebates, is a for-profit business. They cannot discriminate in hiring.

Sounds simple enough.

But if you looked at the job listings at AiG’s website (since taken down), the requirements for some jobs made no sense at all:

That’s a position that requires you to be a Christian… despite working on Ark Encounter.

When my colleague Dan Arel asked Ken Ham about this directly, Ham was adamant that it was a position for Answers in Genesis:

But, as Dan wrote, the conflict was clear:

What it appears is happening here is that AiG is hiring employees for their non-profit and having them work on the Ark Encounter project, a for-profit business. By doing so, they are able to use religious discrimination in the hiring process and claim that the Ark Encounter itself is not hiring or discriminating. If this sounds shady to you, that’s because it is.

Yesterday, Tom Loftus of The Courier-Journal reported that the theme park’s tax incentives are now in jeopardy because of the dishonest and discriminatory hiring practices:

“The Commonwealth doesn’t believe that Ark Encounter, LLC will be complying with state and Federal law in its hiring practices,” Bob Stewart, secretary of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, said in an Aug. 27 letter to an Ark Encounter attorney.

…

“Therefore, we are not prepared to move forward with consideration of the application for final approval without the assurance of Ark Encounter, LLC that it will not discriminate in any way on the basis of religion in hiring,” Stewart wrote.

That job posting — which Answers in Genesis is still defending — may have cost Ken Ham’s team more than $18,000,000 in future rebates.

But I wouldn’t worry too much. In Creationist dollars, I’m sure that’s only about $4.

(via Danthropology. Large portions of this article were posted earlier)