New Scientist reports from a survey from Pennsylvania State University that around 12% say they teach creationism or intelligent design as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species”.

Well, we’re a bit late to the party, but this was just too good to pass up: Illinois Democratic state representative Monique Davis telling an atheist activist testifying before the Assembly that

“it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!”

and yelled at him to get out of his seat and leave, that he had no right to be there.

Wow, so wrong so many different ways. Plenty has already been said — and it pretty well speaks for itself — so I’ll leave it at that. Read and hear the entire exchange; she gets pretty worked up. Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune has a good roundup.

Ed Humes’ Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America’s Soul is now out in paperback and californiaauthors.com is holding a drawing to celebrate. Two lucky winners will get an autographed copy of Humes’ critically acclaimed book on the Dover, PA creationism case. Visit CaliforniaAuthors.com for details. Drawing ends on Friday, February 22.

The Washington Post review called it “gripping.” From the WP:

In 2004, when the Dover, Penn., school board voted to require biology classes to use a supplemental textbook that promoted the theory of intelligent design rather than evolution, the conflict that erupted was about far more than semantics. As Edward Humes describes in this lively and thoughtful book, Dover — like Dayton, Tenn., during the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” — became a proving ground for clashing beliefs about the origins of life and constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.

Learn more about Monkey Girl at edwardhumes.com or at the DYD bookstore.

Big bull evangelical James Dobson tells the rabid-right-o-sphere that he’d rather not vote than to vote for John McCain. In a statement released to the Laura Ingraham show, Dobson says:

But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should John McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life.

Dobson cites McCain’s devilish record on stem cell research, his position on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and his foul mouthed ways as reasons for his decision. Read more and hear Ingraham read the statement at Talking Points Memo.

When South Korea’s president-elect was mayor of Seoul, he said the city was a holy place governed by God. He’s been associated with Korean evangelicals who pray at their monster rallies for the destruction of all Buddhist temples in Korea. The mega-church he attends is chock full of other government officials. Read more at the Asia Times.

God in the White House — a new book from religious historian, episcopal priest and editor-at-large of Chrisitanity Today, Randall Balmer — explores the history and the consequences of the “religionization” of the presidency from John F Kennedy through George W. Bush. From an excerpt offered at npr.org:

… [E]xamples suggest that the quest for moral rectitude in presidential candidates may be chimerical. The candidates’ declarations of faith over the past several decades provide a fairly poor indicator of how they govern. Even the record of the two redeemer presidents of the past half century, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, is mixed. Carter actually sought to govern according to his moral lights and in fidelity to the principles of decency, honor, and fair play that he articulated on the campaign trail; the American voters resoundingly repudiated him when he ran for a second term.

Bush sought the presidency on a platform of morality and Christian virtues. Yet his policies in the first decade of the twenty-first century reflected those values only dimly, if at all. Perhaps it’s time to shift our attention away from the candidates and toward the electorate. What is it we expect from our presidents? Do we look for charisma and political skills, experience in foreign and domestic policy, and administrative competence? Or do we demand that candidates for the White House pass some sort of catechetical test? It’s not an either-or proposition, of course, but the record of the last four decades of the twentieth century suggests that we’ve moved toward the latter and away from the former.

But at what cost?…

Read the complete excerpt, “Cheap Grace: Piety and the Presidency” at npr.org.

Randall Balmer is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America.

Hey, Atheists like piney holiday goodness too. Celebrate the season by adorning your solstice evergreen with nifnak.com’s Flying Spaghetti Monster Ornament.

Or get your craft on for the New Year and whip up some of Kate’s make-your-own solstice decorations. Click here to get step-by-step instructions for making solstice lanterns from strings of holiday lights and pretty tree ornaments from citrus fruit.

AP: Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized atheism in a major document released Friday, saying it had led to some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” ever known. Read more from the Associated Press. Read the encyclical “Saved by Hope” at the Vatican web site.

It is hard to believe that Benedict, touted as a great Roman Catholic intellectual, would put forth the worn argument that Stalin and Mao are proof that disbelief itself is a source of monumental evil in the world, but that is exactly the tired old horse he trots out. So much has been written about this, that I couldn’t have much to add, except to say that it seems obvious that cult of personality leaders of the 20th century were not so much anti-religionists as men who simply wanted to replace one god with another in the Big Power Equation — to replace the unquestioned divine right of kings with the unquestioned divine right of, well, themselves. Louis XVI would have understood Stalin perfectly. One was the Vatican-backed ruler of the Most Catholic France who starved, brutalized and executed his countrymen, the other a “godless” former seminarian who took over the oppression of Russia to starve, brutalize and execute his countrymen.

Also always appropriate to note while running over this rutted old road, adherents to this Stalin/Mao argument seem to be cafeteria critics, conveniently picking a few “godless” monsters to damn all disbelief by association, but as Christopher Hitchens points out, “No country has ever fallen into despotism because it has followed the teachings of Spinoza, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein .” [thx religionandatheism] It is as convenient for Il Papa to forget these as it is for him to forget Torquemada. It is easy for him to limit his discussion to the roots of evil in the 19th and 20th centuries, when the church had routinely tortured and burned people alive for the crime of dissent just a few generations earlier. Easy for him to ignore the fact that all of these atrocities have fanatical unquestioning belief — not disbelief — in common.

CNN: American Academy of Religion is noodling the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Politico: Dean says Jews can go to heaven.

Newsweek: No communion or Presidency for Giuliani say Catholic Bishops.

Mitt Romeny — whose religion accounts for just 2 percent of the US population — says there will be no Muslims in his cabinet, according to an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, because “based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified.” Read more at the CSM.

Of course now that he’s being called on it, Romney is in full denial mode. But talkingpointsmemo’s Josh Marshall explains it all to us (4 mins 30 secs):

Bill Keller tells his followers Romney’s Mormonism will cause Americans to end up in hell, says Salon. Here’s an excerpt:

A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan,” Keller declared in his daily e-mail devotional last May. His reasoning went like this: Romney’s election would serve as a giant advertisement for a competing religion, Mormonism, which Keller and others believe has falsely portrayed itself as another form of Christianity in an effort to find converts. “He would influence people to seek out the Mormon faith,” Keller predicted of a Romney presidency. “They would get sucked into those lies and they would eventually die and go to hell.”

Read more. [thx boingboing and Val]

Also: Orrin Hatch urges Romney to give the “Mormon Speech,” says god-o-meter.

British School teacher Gillian Gibbons allowed Sudanese six- and seven-year old students to name a teddy bear Muhammed, so she has been arrested and is being charged with offending religion and inciting religious hatred. [BBC] Her offense could get her 40 lashes and a year in prison, according to CNN. Imagine the reaction if she prevented the children from naming the bear Muhammad.

This prompts the BBC to ask “What can’t be named Muhammad?” The answer, like most religious “immutable truths” remains debatable. Most important, religion retains its right to be offended by anything it dreams up.

More pandering trouble for Obama. From Earl Offari Hutchinson at the Huffington Post:

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama ripped a page straight from the Bush campaign playbook with his announced upcoming three date barnstorm tour through South Carolina with notorious gay basher, gospel singer Donnie McClurkin. The Grammy winning black gospel singer’s last effort on the political scene was his song and shill for Bush’s reelection at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Obama has hitched his string to McClurkin’s high flying gay bash kite in part out of religious belief (he purports to be somewhat of an evangelical), in bigger part because he’s falling further and further behind Hillary Clinton with the black vote in South Carolina and everywhere else, and in the biggest part of all because he hopes that what worked for Bush’s reelection will work for him.

Read more here.

The well-conceived Politifact.com calls Mike Huckabee on his claim that a majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “clergy.” In fact, only one of 56 was a clergyman. From Politifact: “We’d like to give Huckabee every benefit of the doubt, but even if you consider former clergymen among the signers the best you could come up with is four. Out of 56. That’s not “most,” that’s Pants-on-Fire wrong.” Read more.

BTW: Politifact is a cool and useful site from the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, dedicated to a factual analysis of presidential candidates’ statements and ads. Learn more about it and its nifty truth-o-meter here and check it often. [Thanks Val and TPM]

The FRC Christian Right Summit Straw Poll Results as reported by the AP. The question: Which is the following candidates for president would you be most likely to vote for?