Terry Eagleton remains smug. News at 11.

There are few things that annoy me more than smugness. Terry Eagleton reviews The Joy af Secularilsm, a collection of essays about the slow secularizing of the world. Eagleton is a theologist of some stripe who reacts with appropriate British horror to the the American popular notions of a God incarnate and interventionist, but who is equally horrified when philosophers misidentify God as "a being" and somehow responsible for this world. His reviews of Gnu Atheist books are among the finest examples of The Courtier's Reply ("Who are you to say the Emperor has no clothes? Have you studied fashion?") ever devised.

So when Eagleton writes, "Here, there is no callow and triumphalist rationalism, which in any case is simply the flip side of evangelical fervour," he is, with a wave of his blessed hand, dispensing with the most critical issue in the entire debate: one side has evidence. One side has tools with which we can examine the emperor and can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there isn't a stitch on that man.

If only Terry Eagleton were actually willing to look through a microscope. Despite his sneering, "The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time," theology still offers us nothing but a veneer for community that, sadly, discourages critical thought when it is most needed.

All Men Aren't Rapists

Anna North tells it like it is in an essay about Scott Adams's recent dickishness:

Just because some men commit rape doesn't mean all other men are only restrained from it by the artificial strictures of society. In fact, the fantasy of a hyper-willing female partner, one who is both exceedingly desirous of sex and exceedingly satisfied by a man's skills, is common in both porn and pop culture. A few current videos on XTube, for instance, include Climax2000, Cuming [sic] For You, Debbs Dark Desires, and Wanting Some Big Dick, all of which appear to depict women in various states of hunger-for-your-cock. ... Even quite male-centric depictions of female sexuality often include not just consent but enthusiastic desire and orgasm. The idea that men's natural instincts are rape-centric isn't supported even by media that serve their most private predilections.

Why does Matt Barber hate America?

As far on the wrong side of history as Thomas Kimber and Ronald Numbers, Matt Barber insists: "Legitimate marriage can no more evolve into counterfeit same-sex marriage than a protein molecule from a mud puddle can evolve into a human being."

Hey, guess what, Matt? Evolution is true, and should you ever get cancer, you may be thankful that the field of Evolutionary Oncology exists. Whenever you're hungry, express gratitude that evolutionary agriculture exists.

I've said it before: if you're opposed to evolutionary biology, the primary science of the 21st century and its primary foundation, you're opposed to the success of the United States of America on the world stage. No other country in the world teaches its children such rubbish as "intelligent design" or any of its less sophisticated sophistries. No self-respecting industrial biology laboratory would knowingly hire an Intelligent Design proponent; it would be financially runious to do so.

Hey, Matt, you know how you'll be remembered, if at all? This way: U.S. History Students of 2083 say: "It's Pretty Embarrassing How Long You Guys Took To Legalize Gay Marriage".

Dinosaurs, Appendixes, and International Telegraph Lines.

Why I still read Andrew Sullivan:

A church with more confidence in its own doctrine would not need to lean upon the law. Imagine a church that reacted by saying that it disagreed, but that Christianity was the real counter-cultural force and it would rededicate itself to encouraging, nurturing and helping opposite sex married couples in its own pews as role models for the rest. Since gay marriage is obviously a sham, it will surely die out and we are confident enough in our own doctrines to be indifferent to, if saddened by, it.