Freethinker Sermonettes
revere | May 16, 2010I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not…
revere | May 9, 2010There seem to be two demographic groups that have more than their share of sensible attitudes to religion. The young and the old. To the young its irrelevant. To the old it's laughable (or as my Uncle Nate said as he was dying, "I still think it's a load of crap"). Here's another boatload of commonsense from my end of the age distribution:
revere | May 2, 2010Here's Marcus Brigstocke again, because hearing this once, twice or many times is never enough:
revere | April 25, 2010Got this in my email. For all I know the whole country got it. That's how these campaigns go these days. I'm not sure its origin [Source, author Rick Chertof in Tikkun; thanks to reader LeeH], but I suspect it's a fake. No one with this guy's reputation could be confirmed, even if he walks on water. He'd get crucified in the nomiation process:
President Barack Obama is expected to nominate Jesus Christ, an immigrant originally born to a virgin mother in Bethlehem, to fill the new vacancy on the Supreme Court. Although Mr. Christ is over 2,000 years old, He is immortal, so Democrats and…
revere | April 18, 2010Some things are pretty hard to swallow. You know what I mean:
See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.
revere | March 28, 2010Orac at Respectful Insolence hates "woo" (for some reason I dislike that term; I prefer to call it quackery). He's a surgeon and has seen cases where that kind of stuff killed people through delay or refusal of treatment. Fair enough. But I am fascinated by this example where it didn't kill someone:
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same…
revere | March 21, 2010I'm still grant writing (a couple of more weeks), so I Thank God for my Savior, Edward Current, who again saves me from having to write a long Sermonette:
revere | March 14, 2010The US and Israel are near the top of the list in having citizens who believe in evolution -- at or near the top, that is, if you turn the list upside down. In international surveys the US ranks last and Israel 4th from last among 27 countries regarding belief in the proposition that "human beings developed from earlier species of animals" being definitely or probably true (US, 45%, Israel, 54%). There's another similarity. The US has fringe fundamentalist crazies in positions of authority (like the Texas State Board of Education) who deny evolution (and this just in: took The Enlightenment…
revere | February 28, 2010According to some notorious hate groups, the Obama administration is meeting with hate groups:
Some conservative commentators are accusing the Obama administration of inviting "hate groups" into the White House by holding a meeting with a coalition of secularist and atheist groups.
Officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments met Friday with representatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group that includes American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. The coalition called it "the first time in history a presidential administration has met…
revere | February 21, 2010This is a warning. The clips below are offensive. The second one I've had sitting on my text editor for a couple of weeks and had decided it was too offensive to use in the Sermonette. Whatever some of you may think (assuming you think), this space is not designed to be offensive to religion. I couldn't care less about anyone else's religious views as long as they don't tell me I have to adopt their superstitions. I have enough superstitions of my own, but at least they're harmless (knock on wood!). I use this space for things I think are subversive of religion. Subversion is a subtle thing,…
revere | February 14, 2010If I have to work on my grant on a Sunday morning, then you have to watch this. Penance. Because you aren't in Sunday School:
revere | January 31, 2010Pat Robertson said something impolitic about Haiti (like the earthquake was because they made a pact with the devil) and as result he gets a lot of hate mail. I wouldn't ordinarily reprint any of it, but it seems like the devil (aka Satan) was pretty pissed and sent him a letter (hat tip readers J and K C). So we decided to give the Devil his Due:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made…
revere | January 24, 2010Some readers seem to think I should be commenting on the election of Scott Brown to the US Senate in Massachusetts. I don't have much to say. Senate Democrats brought it on themselves, although it's too bad they also brought it on the rest of us, but that's the way the system works. So Welcome to the Senate Mr. Brown. I'm sure The Family will be glad to have you over for dinner:
revere | January 10, 2010Via microdot at The Brain Police I learned of the latest intellectual(?) property/trademark claim. Popedom:
The Vatican has awarded itself a "unique copyright" on the Pope's name, image, coat of arms, and any other symbol or logo related to the Holy Father.
"The use of anything referring directly to the person or office of the Supreme Pontiff...and/or the use of the title 'Pontifical,' must receive previous and express authorization from the Holy See," reads a statement released by the Vatican on Saturday morning, the Catholic News Agency (http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/…
revere | January 3, 2010It seems to us the battle between the secular and the religious is settling down into a predictable form of trench warfare. From the secular side (that's where my trench is located) comes this recitation of the now accepted responses to the now expected arguments of the religious against us atheists (hat tip reader LT). Many of these arguments involved some rather deep issues that are treated in a fairly superficial way. For example, Carl Sagan's remark that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I'm not even sure what that means but I see no reason why it should be true. Or…