religion
pharyngula | January 15, 2008It's a good thing that Minnesota Atheists are making an effort to get on the radio. Have you ever looked at the Christian talk radio programming in your area? It's like a black hole of rampaging stupid, so awfully banal and inane that it's terrifying. I was just sent the program guide for our major Minneapolis Christian talk station — KKMS, AM980 — and it offers a rather creepy view of their perspective. There are some surprises, though. Guess what venue the big time Intelligent Design creationists use to spread their ideas?
Tuesday
3:00 Hour - "The KKMS Ministry of the Month" - Dr. John…
pharyngula | January 15, 2008I've known this site for a long time, but a reader just sent me a link to it, so maybe I shouldn't take for granted that you all know about it, too…it's Fundies Say The Darndest Things, a collection of ripe and juicy quotes culled from Christian discussion boards. Some of them I suspect to be the product of godless trolls, but others, including some of the most outrageously ridiculous statements, are definitely from steadfast fundamentalists.
evolvingthoughts | January 14, 2008
In an article on the Catholic or otherwise virtues of Harry Potter (didn't we do all this a while back), L'Osservatore Romano has an article claiming that Harry Potter is the wrong kind of hero. Why is that? Not, as you might think, because there are wizards in it - apparently Tolkein is OK. But because
[d]espite several positive values that can be found in the story, at the foundations of this tale is the proposal that of witchcraft as positive, the violent manipulation of things and people thanks to the knowledge of the occult, an advantage of a select few: the ends justify the means…
pharyngula | January 14, 2008It's easy. Look at all the students who think the cure for social problems is praying for 40 days.
Ah, maybe we shouldn't pick on 'em too much. It's cruel to taunt the handicapped.
(UM students and alumni should feel free to defend the honor of their school in this thread.)
grrlscientist | January 14, 2008tags: atheism, religion, science, evolution, humor
A reader sent me this list of atheist-positive anecdotes that have been seen either on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. Of course, they are accurate as well as hilarious. Which ones are your favorites?
Top Fifty Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers
Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole
Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry
Too Stupid to Understand Science? Try Religion.
*There's A REASON Why Atheists Don't Fly Planes Into Buildings
"Worship Me or I Will Torture You…
pharyngula | January 14, 2008You really should read this Senator Charles Grassley's investigation into megachurches. It's about time someone pulled down these big-time scams.
Nearly 2,000 years later, some who claim to speak in Jesus' name are taking a different view. Consider Bishop Eddie Long, who pastors a megachurch in Lithonia, Ga. With a salary approaching $1 million a year and a nine-bathroom mansion situated on 20 acres, Long's choice of vehicles reflects his opulent lifestyle: He drives a $350,000 Bentley.
Far from casting out money changers, Long is likely to join them. In a 2005 profile in the Atlanta Journal-…
evolvingthoughts | January 12, 2008
Lawyers shouldn't determine who gets to read what. Religions shouldn't determine who gets to think what. But the worst combination is when religions use lawyers to stop criticism of their actions and beliefs.
Scientology, the money making scam purveyed by the mentally deficient (I can't think of a nicer way to say it), has prevented Andrew Morton's biography of Tom Cruise, the couch and shark jumping actor, from being sold in Australia. This follows similar moves made, by threats of litigation as usual, in the UK.
Now, I don't know whether Morton's biography is a piece of crap or a…
gregladen | January 11, 2008In a very important ruling, a Federal district court in Missouri has ruled that allowing the Gideons to come into elementary schools and distribute Bibles to students is a violation of the establishment clause .... This is a key ruling that could be replicated nationwide, where many schools still allow the Gideons to go into schools and do this. The ruling was by summary judgment.
Ed Brayton has the story and the details here.
gregladen | January 11, 2008They were possessed by the devil. She claims the demons did the killing but authorities may not be buying it.
Banita Jacks, 33, is charged with three counts of felony murder and one count of first-degree murder while armed.
The victims, who range in age from 5 to 17 years, are thought to be her daughters. ...
Jacks told police that her daughters were possessed by demons and that each died in her sleep during a seven- to 10-day period, court documents said. Aja died first, she told police, then N'kiah, Tatianna and Brittany.
"She said that as the first three younger children died, she…
oracknows | January 11, 2008
If there's one thing I've learned about woo in the more than a year and a half that I've been doing this regular Friday feature, it's that there's definitely a religious element to virtually all woo. In essence, it requires believing in something that cannot be demonstrated scientifically, often despite science outright refuting it. For example, there have been several "victims" (I mean subjects) for this Friday feature that have been explicitly fundamentalist Christian in nature1, 2, 3, 4, even a parody of such beliefs. Of course, if you're a New Age-type woo, you wouldn't call it "…
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2008Francisco Ayala in the most recent edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science makes a good distinction between religion and science (italics mine):
Science and religion concern different aspects of the human experience. Scientific explanations are based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world and rely exclusively on natural processes to account for natural phenomena. Scientific explanations are subject to empirical tests by means of observation and experimentation and are subject to the possibility of modification and rejection. Religious faith, in contrast, does…
pharyngula | January 9, 2008This is probably a serious site. Probably. It could be satire, but the line between satire and Christianity is razor thin. Read Christian dating tips, and judge for yourself.
First rule of Christian dating: it's pretty much like going to church. Boring, chaste, and offering nothing but faint hopes. No intimacy is allowed, not even a kiss.
Choose to not kiss - At least until you are engaged to be married. Okay, this can be extremely difficult, but if you can follow this one dating tip then most of the others will happen naturally. Even kissing once you are engaged can be very dangerous. It's…
razib | January 7, 2008Ross Douthat has a quick comment on a Noah Feldman piece on Mormonism. Feldman is really, really smart; but his argument is a bit more extended than it needs to be. This interest in the religion is basically sparked by the Romney candidacy. A few quick points:
First, the evangelical Protestant (and to a lesser extent other Christians) hostility toward Mormonism is I think pretty comprehensible and requires little analytic decomposition: they think Mormons are liars. Specifically, Mormon theology is so different from the range of ideas in circulation among "orthodox" Christians that most…
pharyngula | January 7, 2008Here's a fine list of 20 blasphemous events, rated by
vulgarity, criminality, religious impact, political impact, and deaths. My favorite has to be number 13.
Rude Buddha
A sculpture of Buddha with a banana and two eggs strategically placed was happily on display at the Royal Academy of Arts this summer, but when it was moved to the sculptors' home city of Norfolk it raised hackles amongst the local police force's hate crime unit. DC Dan Cocks ordered it to be removed from the gallery. The artist said he aimed to show that in a global village everyone can take offence at something.
I know,…
pharyngula | January 6, 2008So the Catholic church has a problem with pedophilia. In a rational world, there's a range of options available: stop protecting priests who abuse their position, threaten convicted child-abusing priests with expulsion and excommunication, even revisit this peculiar custom of demanding celibacy for the priesthood. Alas, the Pope has his own very special solution.
Pope Benedict XVI has instructed Roman Catholics to pray "in perpetuity" to cleanse the Church of paedophile clergy. All dioceses, parishes, monasteries, convents and seminaries will be expected to organise continuous daily prayers…
oracknows | January 6, 2008Here's part 1.
Here's part II. It's Bill Maher on David Letterman ranting about "toxins," how we are being "poisoned by America," and how your body is trying to produce a "river of mucus" to rid itself of the toxins, all standard tropes of "alternative" medicine and quackery. Sadly, David Letterman seems to buy right into the whole rant, more or less.
Maher's mindless parroting of the vague claims of quacks who think that "detoxification" is the cure for every ill, combined with his being an antivaccination wingnut and a germ theory denialist, are just three reasons why, whenever I see anyone…
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008Over at Monkey Trials, Scott Hatfield suggests that in the next administration the new presidential science advisor should be a famous science popularizer such as EO Wilson or perhaps even better Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not only would these individuals have the breadth of knowledge to advise in multiple areas of science, but just as importantly, they could serve as leading public ambassadors for science.
Just one problem: Most science popularizers such as Wilson or Tyson don't have the years of government experience to understand the machinations of Federal science policy. Moreover, they have a…
evolvingthoughts | January 5, 2008
Larry Arnhart has a post up on how Huck Finn's moral quandary about turning in Jim, the escaped slave, as good religion said he should (at the time), when he has come to know and admire Jim as a man, displays the evolved nature of morality. I tend to agree with this view.
Huck decides, "Very well then, I'll go to hell". Here's the entire passage, one of the greatest in English literature.
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell…
pharyngula | January 5, 2008
Best line: "You can't be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."
gregladen | January 5, 2008Christian Creationists are accusing scientists of being defensive, ignorant, reprehensible, and troubling. They might be right.
The NAS just published the latest version of its book on Evolution and Creationism (free, by the way: Your tax dollars at work) and we are now seeing the trickle of reaction from the largely creationist Christian community turn from a trickle to a drizzle.
I myself think it is a good book, but I believe they made two very important (and closely linked) errors. First, they should not have discussed creationism at all. It should be a book about evolution, with a…