religion
clock | May 17, 2007A must-read by Sara Robinson. You can use it to understand the persistence of Creationism. Or the lack of Internal Locus of Moral Authority in people belonging to Moral Majority.
oracknows | May 17, 2007
When I learned of this, I had been highly tempted trot out everybody's favorite undead Führer for a little fun with the Church of Scientology's latest antics. Indeed, when you find out what I'm about to discuss, you'll see why it was a candidate for the loving chomp of his rotting jaws. Heck, I even started to do the whole Hitler zombie schtick that regular readers all know and some even love (or at least tolerate--well, most of you, anyway). As I typed away, though, I was having more and more trouble. My conscience was feeling more and more troubled. After all, I've lovingly crafted…
mikethemadbiologist | May 16, 2007Let's leave aside decency and morality and try to forget that Romney eliminated funding for a gay teen suicide hotline to curry favor with the theopolitical Right. Let's not plumb the dark, foul abyss that is Mitt Romney's soul. Let's not ask how morally decrepit one would have to be to attempt to gain political office through the suicide of a child. Let's talk about evolution: Romney's not half bad.
Here's what Romney said:
"I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe," Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. "And I believe evolution is most likely the process he…
mikethemadbiologist | May 16, 2007
The 'godly' singing "The Old Rugged Cross." Or something
The last thing most people in the Coalition of the Sane want when they are being treated for a serious illness in the hospital to have the staff try to convert you to another religion. And when you force a sick patient to choose between following the dictates of his religion or not eating in an effort to convert him, that is not 'godly', that is inhumane. It's also par for the course for Christopathic Uruk-hai.
From the Des Moines Register (italics mine):
U.S. Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans…
pharyngula | May 16, 2007Man, what a beautiful burn.
And he doesn't just take on Falwell, it's the whole rotten edifice of religion.
evolvingthoughts | May 16, 2007
Its is here. It's a largish PDF, about 81Mb, and this is only a temporary site until I get the proper files to Archive.Org for assembly and OCR.
Philip Henry Gosse was a well-known naturalist in the early 19th century. Huxley referred to him as "that honest hodman of science", and he was responsible (I am told) more than anyone else, for the new fashion of keeping aquariums.
Gosse's son, Edmund, wrote a rather unhappy memoir about growing up with a devout and strict father, called Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments, in which he mentions this book:
My Father had never admired…
pharyngula | May 15, 2007While I am sorry for the pain that his family now feels, we can all take solace in the fact that the extinction of the televangelist was all part of god's loving plan.
grrlscientist | May 15, 2007tags: Jerry Falwell, quotes, religion, bigotry
As you probably know, Reverend Jerry Falwell died suddenly today after eating breakfast. It sounds like he died from a heart attack, although no one is quite sure yet. But isn't it interesting that Falwell was once described as having "heart challenges"? Speaking of having heart challenges, he was a true fire-and-brimstone preacher who founded a college, Liberty University, that presumably is trying to carry on with his proud tradition of judging others unnecessarily harshly. Here are a few quotes from Jerry Falwell, lest any of us forget what…
pharyngula | May 15, 2007A Christian game company has started a promotion for one of their games, and one gimmick is that they are offering a $10,000 prize to any atheist or agnostic who can replicate the unique literary style of the bible, which they purport is evidence of its divine origin.
Mankind has been debating the issue of "who wrote the bible" for centuries. Some view the Bible as only the writings of man. Others claim it is inspired. We offer a simpler comment and challenge. Bring all of your books, empty your shelves, from the crypt, ancient, new, lost, hidden, revealed, secret, inspired, outspired, by…
oracknows | May 15, 2007A while back, I coined a term for woo so irrational, woo so desperate to masquerade as reason and science, that it could be spewed forth into books, the Internet, and the blogosophere by only one man.
The man is Deepak Chopra, and the term is Chopra-woo, examples of which can be found here and here.
I had thought that there was no man quite as capable of producing such concentrated woo cloaked in the language of science (well, except perhaps for the DNA Activation guy or the guys at Life Technology, but their woo is so utterly over-the-top that I have a hard time accepting that they actually…
evolvingthoughts | May 14, 2007
John Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued that the rule of law and the imposition of religion ought to be two different things, and only the former ought to be a civil matter. All religions were to be tolerated. Having done a good thing in the context of the religious wars of Europe, Locke then did a bad thing which continues to echo today. He wrote:
Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in…
pharyngula | May 14, 2007You might not want to look at this story about the televangelist fraud, Peter Popoff around lunchtime — it contains graphic visuals of a known con artist cheerfully defrauding the sick and elderly, and it might leave you a little squeamish. Popoff was discredited by James Randi 20 years ago, as is vividly shown at the link, but he's back now, sucking in millions of dollars every year with his lies.
There's also a couple in the story who were sick and unemployed, and who borrowed thousands of dollars from relatives to help them pay their bills…and who instead sent all the money to Popoff, who…
razib | May 13, 2007In my post on religious diversity I received this comment:
And for the record, I don't think anybody's religious sensibilities deserve to be put above the law. You want a driver's license, you show your face for the picture. You want to be pharmacist, you sell anything legal. You want to take government-insured patients, you take all of them.
It's no more ridiculous to worship that bull than a book. No less, either.
I agree with the ultimate sentiment in my heart. That being said, proximate judgments and assessments are made with the head. The fool hath said in his heart, "Religion is just…
jrosenhouse | May 12, 2007Since I'm criticizing my SciBlings today, permit me a few words about this post from Orli over at Neurontic.
Orli is unimpressed with the recent glut of atheist books. She begins by reproducing a segment from a previous post:
Dawkins and Dennett simply cannot understand the impulse to cling to an antiquated belief system not grounded in fact. (They seem incapable of recognizing that religion, despite its myriad flaws, provides a type of moral succor in times of strife that science can't.) To convince the masses of the errors of their ways, they're using the only weapon at their disposal:…
evolvingthoughts | May 12, 2007
In what is for this furriner a somewhat perplexing column, Kathleen Parker, who is supposedly one of the Washington Post stable of writers, argues that the question asked of Republican nominees for presidency - Do you believe in evolution? - was unfair.
I fail to see why. Sure, nobody expects the president to select the next generation of successful breeders for any generation, but this is a good surrogate test of whether or not the candidate thinks science is to be trusted, or whether they think, as this administration odes, that they can choose the reality in which they operate with…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2007Well, that got your attention, didn't it? Actually, I'm referring to a post by PZ where he discusses his objections to religion. In reading them, they really didn't seem to describe my religion, so I thought it would be interesting to go through them.
For background, I guess I'm a Reconstructionist when it comes to theology, Reform when it comes to politics (i.e., my politics and stands on social issues most resemble those of the Reform movement), and Conservative when it comes to observance (what Christians would call practice). I'm not going to pretend to speak for "Jews", but simply…
pharyngula | May 10, 2007Brent got asked a question by Vox Day: to list Christianity's 10 greatest sins against science. He expands a little bit:
I'm reading all of these New Atheist books, I keep reading these condemnations of Christians being anti-science, but no one ever bothers to explain exactly what they mean by that. I mean, what the Hell does Galileo's trial have to do with Christian attitudes today, except as some sort of analogy for... something current? But what?
I mean, if the worst thing people have done is put someone on trial 500 years ago, is it really such a huge deal? Now, I'm assuming that there…
mikethemadbiologist | May 10, 2007Remember the old joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged? By way of Ed Brayton, I came across this post by Kent Hovind about his time in jail. Both the post and some of the responses are fascinating (in a 'car wreck' sort of way) because they illuminate the authoritarian mind so well. Hovind has reached an epiphany of sorts about the criminal justice system:
At lunch last week, one of the inmates said, "If I could, I would bomb the Christian Coalition. They are the reason we are here." I was shocked by his statement! I love the Christian Coalition, but I understand the…