Sanity Pills

Lets talk science, and lets talk “science.” Facts hurt the right wing, we’ve known it for a while. This article does a pretty good job at summing up lots of the nonsense that goes on. A good read.

But when policies involving human biology and behavior are being hammered out, faith alone isn’t always sufficient to win over voters and decision-makers. At such times, a bit of scientific evidence comes in handy, and some of the Religious Right’s operatives aren’t too choosy about where they get it.

They talk about seven claims of the religious right, and then the actual facts.

Check it out.

Question: What happens when a liberal blogger somehow manages to register a popular domain name?

Answer: “faith-fucking”

Hat tip to the apostropher.

Norbizness over at Happy Furry Puppy Story Time takes an excellent look at these ridiculous legislative initiatives allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions if it violates their religious or moral beliefs:

1) It seems that the easiest job possible would be a cardiologist who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Since your crazy religion forbids blood transfusions, and all heart surgery would, I imagine, necessitate such transfusions, you can kick back and proselytize to unwilling hospital staff for 40 hours a week.

(1a) But we can find a better absurdity. In order to test the limits of these type of laws, encourage as many Christian Scientists as possible to apply to pharmacy school. Since it’s against their religious beliefs to ingest medication, I don’t think they’d be dispensing any prescriptions. And if they could, we need to find us some militant-ass, throw-your-pills-in-the-garbage-while-creepily-smiling-at-you Christian Scientists.

These laws are just ridiculous. I’d like to see a Catholic priest become a Protestant minister and then preach to the congregation about the infallibility of the pope. Or even better, what if a Jew became a priest and refused to teach the new testament? The permutations of this are limitless.

It’s one thing to believe that an absurd idea like abstinence-only education works, but when you mix in outrageous lies you’re doing unmistakeable harm. Representative Waxman (D-Calif) has released a report that discusses some of the lies that are being taught to the nation’s children under the guise of “sex education.” NOW has a good overview of the report here.

Among these inaccuracies are reports that a pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms. One curriculum states that 5 to 10 percent of women who have legal abortions will become sterile.

Get the full report here.