Oklahoma’s favorite wingnut legislator, Sally Kern, is now trying to pass a “proclamation for morality” in that state. Predictably, it includes several of those now-infamous fake quotes that David Barton has thrust upon the world. Here’s the full proclamation:

(more…)

Fresh from its tireless (and largely successful) efforts to weaken the science curriculum, the Texas State Board of Education has set its sights on ruining the social studies curriculum too. It starts with the appointment of a panel of “experts” chosen by the board to make recommendations on that curriculum, which includes supreme wingnuts like David Barton and Peter Marshall.

Now the SBOE has appointed the curriculum writing team for social studies and it has an equally undistinguished group of nuts on it. Like Bill Ames, who claims that those who advocate comprehensive sex education actually want teenagers to get pregnant:
(more…)

You have to give it to Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia. He may be ignorant, but he’s relentlessly ignorant. He’s back with yet another resolution declaring our “Judeo-Christian heritage,” H.Res. 397. It’s identical to the one he submitted last year, basically a laundry list of religious right myths cribbed from Christian Nationalist websites.

One example:

Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible

(more…)

My latest post on Christian nation falsehoods attracted commenters leaving yet more falsehoods. I’ve decided to move them up to their own post to debunk them. The first several came from someone using the name Derender and he starts out with one of the classic false quotes:

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.” – Patrick Henry

(more…)

If you enjoyed Don McLeroy and Terri Leo in the first Texas Intellect Massacre, where they butchered the science standards with the Chainsaw of Jesus, wait till you see the sequel. These murderers of reason have now set their sights on the social studies curriculum and they’re appointing a panel of “experts” — read “wingnut ideologues” — to screw up that subject too. My friends at the Texas Freedom Network report:

The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum “expert” panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.

(more…)

If you’ve spent time, as I have, reading the incredibly dishonest historical distortions of fake Christian “historians” like David Barton and William Federer, here’s what an intellectually honest Christian historian looks like. Gregg Frazer, writing about the claim that the Bible is the source of the principles found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution:

(more…)

I wrote the other day about Worldnutdaily columnist Jane Chastain passing on the fake quote from James Madison that we hear so often. I also posted a comment on her blog pointing out that it was fake and, unsurprisingly, she misses the point completely and offers an absurd rationalization for why it’s okay. This is absolutely routine behavior for religious right apologists.

I pointed her to David Barton’s statement about a number of false quotes that he passed on in his original book, The Myth of Separation, just to show her that even the guy who made the quote popular now admits that it has never been found anywhere in Madison’s actual writings or speeches. In response, she credulously repeats Barton’s lame excuses for the fake quotes, but first she falsely calls Barton a historian:
(more…)

I saw this Youtube video at Balko’s blog of Christopher Hitchens debating the utterly dense Ken Blackwell about whether this is a Christian nation or not. Balko says Hitchens “annihilates” Blackwell, and that is true. Blackwell babbles like an idiot for most of it. But what jumped out at me was something Hitchens said that just grinds on me because it is so blatantly false and it is being presented by someone who so often speaks for causes I believe in.

Speaking about the Declaration of Independence, when Ken Blackwell mentions the notion of unalienable rights being self-evident, Hitchens says, “The person who put in the words ‘self-evident’ on that committee was Benjamin Franklin, who was undoubtedly an atheist.” But this is every bit as transparent a lie as anything David Barton has ever said.
(more…)

No matter how many times its non-existence is pointed out, and even admitted to by David Barton, religious right apologists continue to peddle this fake quote from James Madison. The latest is Jane Chastain at the Worldnutdaily:

James Madison, the primary author of our Constitution, said this:

“We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

No he didn’t. No matter how many times you repeat this lie, it’s still false.

My friend Chris Rodda has made a series of Youtube videos debunking many of the claims made by David Barton. There are 9 of them altogether and you can view them all below the fold.

(more…)

Here’s an article about the controversy over mandatory prayer during meals at the Naval Academy that features some shallow and twisted thinking from some midshipmen and their parents. Like this:

“I think the mids understand they have to live in a world of diversity, and have to learn to tolerate other religious beliefs,” said Debbie Camiolo, parent of a midshipman and a member of the Pennsylvania academy parents support group.

(more…)

From – where else? – the Worldnutdaily, which features this absurd column from Tom Flannery chock full of silly claims and myths. Including this whopper of a myth that the rest of us left behind in about the 5th grade:

Christopher Columbus, after all, became convinced that the world was round after reading a verse of Scripture from the book of Isaiah: “It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40:22a, emphasis mine). This revelation led ultimately to his decision to sail to the Indies and his discovery of America in 1492.

(more…)