religion
oracknows | November 30, 2007I haven't said much about Gillian Gibbons, the unfortunate schoolteacher from Britain who fell afoul of religious fundamentalism in Sudan when she did a class exercise in which her class picked a name for a Teddy Bear. Unfortunately, the name the children picked was Mohammed. Because of Islamic proscriptions against making an "image" of Mohammed, she was arrested for "inciting religious hatred," in what has to be one of the most idiotic consequences of extreme religious belief that I've seen. She could have received a sentence of 40 lashes but was "only" sentenced to 15 days--in a hellish…
pharyngula | November 30, 2007So this young man, Dennis Lindberg, refused a blood transfusion and died. This was a completely useless, futile death; it wasn't a sacrifice that helped someone, and it was avoidable by a routine medical procedure. So what could possibly have driven him to this behavior?
Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer had denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knew "he's basically giving himself a death sentence."
"I don't believe Dennis' decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands…
oracknows | November 29, 2007It looks as though the Jehovah's Witnesses have claimed another life. This time, though, it wasn't an adult, as it was recently. This time, though, through the indoctrination inherent in the Jehovah's Witness religion and, incredibly and inexcusably, the acquiescence of our legal system to their irrational and dubious interpretation of a text written thousands of years before blood transfusion was ever contemplated, the life lost was that of an adolescent:
A 14-year-old boy who refused blood transfusions in his fight against leukemia -- based on religious beliefs -- died Wednesday night in…
gregladen | November 29, 2007Genesis 2 ends with Adam and Eve being naked yet not ashamed. In Genesis 3, the Serpent, who is wiser than average, tricks Eve into partaking of the forbidden fruit of one of god's two magic trees. This results in Adam and Eve recognizing their own nakedness, and compelling them to produce the first clothing. The word "naked" in the original Hebrew is either eromim or arumim. The former means naked (no clothes) and the latter means exposure as in exposing lies. The original Hebrew for the "clothing" that they put together, "chagowr" probably means "belt." The parallel (and probably…
gregladen | November 29, 2007One of my best friends, who shall remain nameless for the present, a scientist, an atheist, a heavily decorated soldier in the war on Christmas, raised two wonderful, brilliant children, on of which being a devote catholic now in training to be a very devote catholic. Like a priest or something.
I am a committed and fairly activist atheist, but I find it astounding that both my wife and daughter are much more militant than I am... I come from a long line of priests and nuns, and have a lot of exposure to religious stuff, I was an alter boy planning to be a priest when I grew up ... in other…
pharyngula | November 29, 2007It's ben a terrible couple of days for Christianity — I've gotten an awful lot of e-mail reporting indiscretions by those trusted members of the clergy.
Rev. Don LaRose/Rev. Ken Williams, lunatic who abandoned his family and changed his name. The only thing he kept in common in his identities was his calling as a pious con artist.
Lay preacher Malcolm Edwards-Sayer, convicted of fraud and theft. (This one is also a lawyer, so maybe we can blame this one on his other vocation.)
Rev. Cory Cortezis Lewis, arrested for sexual battery on a minor.
Rev. Richard Roberts, resigned as president…
gregladen | November 28, 2007
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 (5 - 25) are distinctly different and contradictory origin stories. The biblical origin story represented in this text has long been known to resemble a set of Sumerian stories that mainly deal with a multitude of gods interacting (some of these gods are converted to humans in the biblical version). What is consistent about all of these stories is the relationship between status and labor, in the context of a labor-intensive agricultural system.
Genesis 1 is very systematic, resembling a post-hoc construction of events, and its main practical purpose may be to…
pharyngula | November 28, 2007A pathologist in Ontario made some dreadful, stupid, sloppy mistakes, the kinds of errors that can destroy people's lives.
The mistakes Smith made in conducting autopsies or giving second opinions on autopsies prompted the province to call the inquiry. His work contributed to some parents or caregivers coming under suspicion or being convicted for the deaths of their children.
It took years and many cases for this guy's incompetence to be caught out. How could that be?
Ontario's deputy chief coroner admits he failed to recognize warning signs about a controversial pathologist because he was…
gregladen | November 27, 2007As a child in Catholic school, and later in public school and being sent off to "release time" religious instruction, I had the opportunity to read most of the Old and New Testaments of the standard bible. Later, in junior high school, I became interested in comparative religion, and read it all again, together with some other texts that are not normally considered part of the Bible. Then all that fell to the wayside as I went off to do different things.
[Repost from gregladen.com]
In graduate school, I was lucky to have Irv DeVore as my primary advisor (eventually ... it did not start out…
pharyngula | November 27, 2007But of course fanatical Catholic Bill Donohue is furious about the upcoming movie, The Golden Compass, and is ranting and raving about it. Pullman offers a universally useful and sensible response.
"To regard it as this Donohue man has said -- that I'm a militant atheist, and my intention is to convert people -- how the hell does he know that? Why don't we trust readers? Why don't we trust filmgoers?" Pullman said. "Oh, it causes me to shake my head with sorrow that such nitwits could be loose in the world."
It's just a book and a movie, and it doesn't compel the reader to like it — and we…
gregladen | November 27, 2007
It is true. Praise be the noodles.
[A tip of the macaroni to Pharyngula]
gregladen | November 26, 2007... and get ready for the War on Christmas
Here's a few opening remarks that may serve to inspire.
Begin the War on Christmas from NoGodBlog.com
It's "The War on Christmas" Season Once Again... from Crooks and Liars...
Winning the War on Christmas
Check this out:
[from Stoptheaclu, a truly icky site]
Stay tuned....
pharyngula | November 26, 2007Yet another example of religious insanity:
A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam's Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed, her school said on Monday.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, aged 54 from Liverpool, told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where she was being held.
I don't know why they're blaming the teacher. Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death.
tqa | November 26, 2007
One of the joys of procrastination is that sometimes if you wait long enough, someone else really will take care of things. I mention that because Ed Brayton just did a good job dismantling Casey Luskin's latest whine about how big bad Judge Jones was such a nasty judicial activist for daring to issue a ruling in the Dover, PA Intelligent Design case that addressed the question of whether or not ID is good science. I was planning a long and detailed post on the same thing, but now all that I have to do is highlight one point that Ed didn't make in his post.
As Ed points out, there were a…
evolvingthoughts | November 25, 2007
This paragraph:
This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.
Codswallop.
While it is true that the…
tqa | November 25, 2007
Verse one of Chapter 11 of the Letter of Paul to the Hebrews reads (in the King James translation of the Bible): "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I mention this not because it is Sunday, or because I intend to offer a sermon, but because when I hear the word "faith," the definition that comes into my mind first is "the evidence of things not seen." By that definition, I have a very hard time thinking of science as requiring faith. If anything, "science" is the exact opposite of "faith". The body of knowledge that we call "science" consists of…
oracknows | November 23, 2007Ah, the day after Thanksgiving. I had wondered whether I would have the wherewithal to actually come up with yet another installment of this blog's usual Friday feature. After all, too much food can lead to a decrement in brain function that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to come up with the goods. It seemed to me to be a perfect opportunity to do a treatment of the top-notch woo that you've all come to expect. Fortunately, there's a bit of woo hanging around that I've wanted to have some fun with. This woo is top-shelf, as you will see. The only problem is that I'm not 100%…