Notes from Evil Bender

So today, between buying cheap wine (I’m poor) and listening to a shopper bicker with a store clerk over how spicy was some canned soup, I had the dubious pleasure of listening to a local Christianist radio station.  One thing that you learn while spending a lot of time in the car, including  12-hour drives from the Southwest to the Great Plains and vice versa, is that there are lots of Christian radio stations, and they very from non-offensive uplifting radio (saccharine human interest stories, pleas to unity, etc) to full on Christianist crazy. This last category is very prevalent and is distinguished by news provided by AFA Radio, blaming “liberals” and the “the mainstream media” for everything, and being an echo-chamber that would make the right-wing blogosphere proud.

The station I was listening to today fell into this last category. They interviewed a Christian apologist* who was spewing the usual BS–Christian nation, everything good in the world comes from Christians, etc. But a couple of his claims were so wingnutty that I had to share them with you.

First, he claimed that science is somehow inherently Christian. There was some usual silliness about how “all the great scientific discoveries were made by Christians” and “no famous atheist ever set foot in a science lab”** but where he really shined was in arguing that animist religions have no reason to make the basic scientific assumption that the universe can be understood in rational terms. Now, I don’t disagree: seeing everything as being controlled by capricious spirits isn’t conducive to discovering how anything really works. But this person then went on to argue that belief in the Christian God assumed the universe is ordered. This is coming, mind you, from a bibilical literalist, a Creationist who thinks that archeology proves the Bible is the Word of God. That is, he explicitly believes not only that God violates the laws of nature whenever he sees fit, and that capricious spirits go around interfering with our lives in ways we cannot observe.

Now, belief in God can be compatible with religion, and obviously many scientists are Christian. But fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with a scientific worldview: you cannot believe both reality can be understood through the scientific method and that undetectable forces manipulate that same reality. Nor can you look at the multiple lines of evidence that lead us to conclude an ancient universe and decide God created it 6,000 years ago.

Hilarious claim number two was his supposed refutation of the claim that the US’s laws are not primarily inspired by the Torah. He started from a strawman, claiming that “skeptics” argue the primary source of US law was Hammurabi’s Code (I know, right?) and “refuted” the claim by saying Hammurabi’s code was less respectful of human life than the Torah. Non sequitur aside, I would have thought that even listeners to this station would see through the obvious lies and slight of hand. And just like I’d recommend supernatualists avoid claiming to be pro-science, I’d suggest that defenders of the Torah–you know, the books that tell us to murder disobedient kids–avoid talking about how much it respects the sanctity of human life. The Torah’s about what you would expect from a nomadic bronze-age people. Hammurabi’s code isn’t any better, but that’s what we’d expect.

But I realize I’m asking for fundies to stop being hypocrites, and so I won’t hold my breath.

*I didn’t catch his name–they’re terrible about giving that info out, for some reason.

**Reader challenge: note your favorite easily identifiable refutation of these claims in the comments/