Miscellany, February 18

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Walter Olson
  • “UC Berkeley Website on Evolution Sued for Violating Establishment Clause”. Sued almost certainly without success: the Ninth Circuit has rejected the claim, although the litigant is seeking Supreme Court review. [Citizen Media Law]
  • Nancy Friedman:

    You know about those atheist ads on buses in the UK, right? (“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.”*) Now you can generate your own bus slogan. Beancounters shows us how it’s done. And Christa Allan alerts us to the lookalike poster (real? generated?) in an English bus stop: “There’s probably no bus. So don’t just stand here, start walking.”

    *They call it atheist. I say the “probably” makes it agnostic.

  • Okay, I take back the last several disobliging things I’ve said about the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. In a letter to the Arkansas legislature, they called for the repeal of the state’s (unenforced and unconstitutional) ban on religious unbelievers’ holding office, an anachronism also on the books, apparently, in Tennessee and Texas. “Arkansas atheists have the same rights as religious believers, to hold office and testify in court and state laws to the contrary should be stricken from the books”. All credit to them for standing on principle (via). More: Somin @ Volokh.
  • “The Michigan Law Review’s companion journal First Impressions has published an online symposium on Liability for Exercising Personal Belief Exemptions from Vaccination.” [Concurring Opinions] As a libertarian, and one who’s highly suspicious about letting the government intrude into the family, I’m generally inclined to side with the parents against most of these government intrusions, misguided though I think they usually are in refusing vaccination (whether for religious or nonreligious reasons). That doesn’t mean I’d defend the family-religious-liberty principle to the very end of the line, with, say, the argued right to reject lifesaving blood transfusions for an infant on religious principle. Pluralism and coexistence of multiple communities is ardently to be pursued, but should not amount to a suicide pact.

About Walter Olson

Fellow at a think tank in the Northeast specializing in law. Websites include overlawyered.com. Former columnist for Reason and Times Online (U.K.), contributor to National Review, etc.
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11 Responses to Miscellany, February 18

  1. Polichinello says:
    February 18, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    My favorite version is the Australian one:

    Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday.

  2. David Hume says:
    February 18, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    re: vaccinations, there are major negative epidemiological externalities associated with a critical mass of kids who don’t get vaccinated. but i would say that, i’m an illiberal fascist 😉

  3. Roger Hallman says:
    February 18, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    And you can now legally take your guns to church in Arkansas.

    On a far happier note, I just returned from a Daniel Dennett lecture on Darwin’s “Strange Inversion of Reasoning”. Excellent lecture, though I didn’t get to ask my question. (So here is as good a place to ask as any I suppose.) I wanted to ask Dr. Dennett’s thoughts on people assigning moral and ethical meanings to scientific theories and laws. This is one of the creationists’ chief objection to evolution, after all. “If we take God out of the picture”, they say, “that means that there is no ultimate morality.” Or something like that. SO what of it? What of people who assign moral values to science?

    And OMG, Stephen Hawking will be giving a public lecture at Arizona State in April. Even if I weren’t an astronomy geek, he’d still be a hero of mine.

  4. Danny says:
    February 18, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    I enjoyed the following review of Dennett’s atheist manifesto: Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark

  5. Tim of Angle says:
    February 19, 2009 at 2:57 am

    “That doesn’t mean I’d defend the family-religious-liberty principle to the very end of the line, with, say, the argued right to reject lifesaving blood transfusions for an infant on religious principle. Pluralism and coexistence of multiple communities is ardently to be pursued, but should not amount to a suicide pact.”

    Oh, I don’t know — I could make a case for the proposition that those who would refuse a lifesaving blood transfusion for an infant ought to be allowed to remove their descendants from the gene pool. Sort of a self-correcting problem.

  6. Bad says:
    February 19, 2009 at 7:01 am

    Ah, First Things, the journal in which nutty Catholics demonstrate their amazing ability to sneer and the rather unfortunate effect this sneering has on their ability to follow an argument. But then, leave it to a theologian to have the gall to call anyone else a muddy thinker.

  7. Caledonian says:
    February 19, 2009 at 10:10 am

    “I could make a case for the proposition that those who would refuse a lifesaving blood transfusion for an infant ought to be allowed to remove their descendants from the gene pool. Sort of a self-correcting problem.”

    There are better arguments. Look, someone has to make the decisions for entities that can’t make their own or that we don’t consider to be capable of doing so (i.e. children).

    If we don’t permit parents to contradict what society thinks should be done, then we should stop pretending that they’re making the decisions, and declare all children to be wards of the state. Of course, that would then make supporting those children the state’s responsibility. How much easier it is to let people be responsible for paying, yet lack actual responsibility and the power that necessarily goes along with it…

  8. Mr. F. Le Mur says:
    February 19, 2009 at 11:30 am

    Ce n’est pas un autobus.

  9. Jeeves says:
    February 19, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    @Caledonian
    How much easier it is to let people be responsible for paying, yet lack actual responsibility and the power that necessarily goes along with it…

    And just how much responsibility for paying have “people” actually ceded–gladly–to the state? Expanded SCHIPs for the middle class? And we do pay for the schooling of the little tykes. How much responsibility (child credits? daycare deductions?) is actually being subsidized by the state? And the state demands nothing in return? Just asking.

  10. Rob says:
    February 19, 2009 at 7:23 pm

    I’m also a Libertarian, but I’m actually in favor of requiring vaccinations for the same reason I’m in favor of requiring drivers (but not passengers) to wear seat-belts. Just as an unsecured driver endangers the public (by losing control of their vehicle, turning minor incidents into major ones), an unvaccinated child puts other children in danger by extending the life of a pathogen. By delaying its eradication, it likewise extends the need for vaccinations and their potential side-effects (including mass hysteria over BS links to autism).

    When was the last time you heard of someone getting a polio vaccine?

  11. Rob says:
    February 19, 2009 at 7:26 pm

    @Mr. F. Le Mur

    But that would be a lie!

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