religion
evolvingthoughts | March 6, 2008
I (and apparently Jim Lippard) went to see Dawkins' talk based on his The God Delusion, which I have critiqued before. I was impressed at the technique. It was definitely the very best Revivalist Sermon I have seen. I was not impressed by the content, nor by the fact that Dawkins was playing for laughs, applause and identification of Us versus Them.
In particular I was annoyed that those of us who do not condemn someone for holding religious beliefs were caricatured as "feeling good that someone has religion somewhere". Bullshit. That is not why we dislike the Us'n'Themism of TGD. We…
pharyngula | March 6, 2008Somewhere south of San Francisco, there is a billboard that declares that there is physical proof of the existence of a god, and which suggests that you read their website. A reader sent it to me, and being the sort of open minded fellow who doesn't believe in any gods but is happy to look at any evidence someone might find, I looked.
I'm still an atheist. You can stop here if you want.
This thing is one big tease. It starts with a splash screen:
THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO
WITNESS A MIRACLE
ARE YOU READY?
Sure, I'm ready. Although, really, this is the web, that nest of lies, so it's…
nisbetmc | March 6, 2008
In his regular column at Nature this week, David Goldston weighs in on the themes discussed at the AAAS panel "Communicating Science in a Religious America," which Goldston moderated. In the column titled "The Scientist Delusion," Goldston notes that even very religious publics often strongly support many areas of science. To use as bogeymen and as a rallying cry "religious fundamentalists" and a "public hostile to science" doesn't make much sense and may even serve to harm the goals of promoting science in the United States. As he writes:
The point here is not that there's nothing for…
tqa | March 5, 2008
First, the Discovery Institute didn't seem to know about the anti-evolution bill introduced in Florida last week. Now, they don't seem to actually understand what the bill does. Both of these things are quite strange, considering that the Discovery Institute folks actually wrote all of the substantive parts of the bill.
Rob Crowther just devoted most of an article over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Blog to scolding the media for their coverage of the Florida legislation. Apparently, most of the news coverage made the outrageous claim that the "Academic Freedom Act" would…
pharyngula | March 5, 2008The Vatican wants to erect a statue to Galileo, which is ironic enough. But to put the cherry on top, they plan to place it near the cell where he was held during his heresy trial. Do you think they're doing this as a sign of papal humility, a sort of grand, ornate slap to the forehead and admission that "boy, did we make a boner"? Somehow, I suspect arrogance plays a bigger role.
pharyngula | March 5, 2008All right, so she's not a child any more, but she'll always be my baby girl … and she doesn't seem to think highly of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Does anyone?
(Yeah, she's probably going to beat me up tonight for calling her a child. "So silly a mature 17 year old can see through it" just isn't as punchy.)
purepedantry | March 5, 2008And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)
Moses was high when he saw that bush. Or so speculates Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny…
gregladen | March 3, 2008On one hand, we have the Huckabee factor ... Huckabee's draw on hard right voters in tomorrows primary may lead anti-evolutionists to victory. On the other hand, we have the Obama factor ... Obama's draw on moderate republicans may lead to a cleansing of pernicious liberal elements from the Republican party.
Hilary Hylton has an interesting and informative piece in, of all places, Time, about tomorrow's events in Texas. You need to know this.
Texas has a state-wide school board. This means that when it comes to textbook adoption, Texas is the largest single customer, and thus,…
tqa | March 2, 2008
On Friday, Florida State Senator Ronda Storms introduced an anti-evolution bill to the legislature. She did so quietly, and without fanfare. No press release was issued, and so far the legislation has not received any attention in the press. It also doesn't seem to have attracted any attention from the Discovery Institute or any of the other major anti-evolution websites, either. That's actually a bit of a surprise, since the bill in question is remarkably similar to a "Model Academic Freedom Statute" that the Discovery Institute posted on a website that they (and a media company) set up to…
gregladen | March 2, 2008... according to mainstream Christian leaders.
This is about Larry King, who was fatally shot in the head on February 12 in a classroom. Larry was murdered by his classmate, Brandon McInerney. It appears that Brandon shot Larry because Larry was openly gay and a transvestite.
TUIBG notes on his blog that Bishop Fulton Sheen blames the policy of "tolerance" (a word rarely used because if its innate offensiveness by the GLBTA community). Larry was murdered because the community he lived in generally accepted him. Another way of putting it is that Larry was murdered because the community…
pharyngula | March 2, 2008Why does Revere torment me so? He's got a collection of highlights from the current presidential campaign that make me want to secede from the union.
Is Huckabee out of the race yet? I've been actively avoiding news from the Huckster lately, to prevent the awful symptoms of head-asplodey.
pharyngula | March 2, 2008The premise of evangelical atheism is that you can introduce people to the importance of reason and they will come to a reasonable conclusion on their own. The premise of evangelical faith is that people must accept an arbitrary belief because an arbitrary judge, who the convert may not query, demands it. The former kind of proselytizer ought to be called a teacher, but is more often called an arrogant asshole; the latter ought to be considered a liar, a fraud, and an arrogant asshole in fact, but they actually believe they are humble servants of the lord.
Here's a beautiful example of…
oracknows | March 1, 2008I've always been a bit skeptical of most recommendations by religious figures, but for once I've come across one that I can whole-heartedly support:
Florida pastor Paul Wirth wants his parishioners to make love -- a whole lot of love.
The pastor for Relevant Church in Ybor City is challenging the couples in his congregation to get busy in bed every night for a month.
Wirth said the supposed 50 percent divorce rate is the reason behind the 30-Day Sex Challenge.
He said too many couples let the stress of jobs and daily life get in the way of intimacy.
So far, so good. But wait! There's a catch…
pharyngula | February 29, 2008Ready to be disturbed? Watch this graphic movie of socially sanctioned child abuse of the worst kind — children who are indoctrinated into idiocy.
That's just the first part. Watch the rest, if you can.
razib | February 28, 2008Lots of articles on the radical reinterpretation of the Hadith in Turkey. The Hadith serve as the basis for Islamic law, and orthopraxy more generally. I am on the record as saying that texts don't in the end determine anything, so obviously I'm skeptical. But, I will simply point to a historical analogy; in the 19th century Egypt and Japan attempted to modernize and catch-up with Western nations. Egypt did not truly succeed, Japan did. Where there's a will there always isn't a way; Japan had the necessary preconditions in terms of human capital for the task at hand (e.g., high literacy…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2008I believe I did. And on cue, a bigot steps right up (italics mine):
An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths.
"Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior," Drollinger wrote on the Capitol Ministries' Web site.
The comments drew immediate fire from others in the capital, including the Republican lawmaker who sponsors Drollinger's Bible study group.
Drollinger said "progressive religious tolerance" is…
pontiff | February 28, 2008Coming soon to a desktop near you: Your own digital Jesus. (Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who's there. As much as a collection of bits representing the image of a sheet can be there, I guess that is.)
Yeah I just wrote this post because upon reading the article I couldn't get that damn Depeche Mode song out of my head (or the Johnny Cash version.) Begone you fowl occupier of my neurons which could actually be doing some work!
razib | February 27, 2008The Audacious Epigone crunches the Pew Religion Survey and comes up with some more insights....
evolvingthoughts | February 27, 2008
Chaim Potok, I think, once wrote that people either love the Jews too much or hate them too much. I hope I do neither, but I found this particular point of view by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman a brilliant example of why I don't want to demonise those who are religious but accept evolution and the rest of science:
Yes, Darwinian selection explains the species, physical laws decide planetary orbits, and human ingenuity brought the Bible into being. But religionists should view them all with Heschel’s “radical awe.” The fact that they occur is miracle enough; that natural law governs their…