religion
pharyngula | March 11, 2007Scalzi makes an impractical, mocking suggestion (hey, isn't that all he does?) for how to teach comparative religion:
Incidentally, there's a simple solution to the problem of teaching the history and literature of religions in public schools without "accidentally" tipping over into, you know, proselytizing: Have atheists teach the classes. Yes, that will go over swell, I know. I'm just saying.
He's right, it would never fly, but I have a suggestion that might make it work. Two rules:
The person teaching the course may not at any time or in any way, even indirectly, discuss his or her own…
pharyngula | March 10, 2007Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, now thinks that high-tech, fetal research is OK — if it leads to a cure for homosexuality.
If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.
Note that this is not your old-school, naive eugenics he is proposing; developing a prenatal test for…
pharyngula | March 8, 2007I know I'm late getting to this article on "Darwin's God" that was published last weekend…but I've been busy, OK? And to be honest, when I took a look at at, the first couple of paragraphs turned me off. These are silly rationalizations for god-belief.
Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, Âbelief in hope beyond reason  whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. ÂWhy do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most…
oracknows | March 7, 2007
Believe it or not, the FCC is receiving a fair number of complaints over the Superbowl halftime show featuring His Purpleness, particularly the part where he did a bit of a phallic thing with his guitar (as if generations of rockers haven't done the whole guitar as wank-off thing since at least the 1960's--heck David Bowie used to simulate oral sex on Mick Ronson's guitar back in his Ziggy Stardust days, although I will concede that he never played the Superbowl). I mean, get a load of this complaint:
During Prince's rendition of Purple Rain, which I think is a really great song, there…
pharyngula | March 7, 2007Since David Honig pointed out this one perfect picture, I had to put it up top.
That says it all, doesn't it?
jrosenhouse | March 6, 2007On a recent trip to the local Barnes and Noble, I noticed a remarkable thing. On the main kiosk, the place where the Stephen King and John Grisham books are located, there were two prominently placed volumes that caught my eye. One was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, the other was God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor Stenger.
I live in Western Virginia. These are not the sort of books you would expect to be popular here. Yet the folks at B&N, who I have no doubt are motivated solely by their desire to sell books and not by any particular political or religious bias, placed them…
pharyngula | March 6, 2007Comments on this one are a little superfluous, don't you think? Alice says it all.
It’s time to stomp out atheists in America. The majority of Americans would love to see atheists kicked out of America. If you don’t believe in God, then get out of this country.
The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc., which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.
I don’t recall freedom of religion meaning no religion. Our currency even says, “In God We Trust.” So, to all the atheists in America: Get off of our…
grrlscientist | March 5, 2007Are humans hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen? Certainly, many great thinkers believe this is the case. "A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies," Charles Darwin wrote in his book,The Descent of Man, "seems to be universal."
Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
According to anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features -- belief in a noncorporeal God or gods…
clock | March 5, 2007And you don't even have to believe in dinosaurs to share their fate.
From here. And the preceeding paragraph? Another great quote:
"You know how taking so long to end slavery is a shameful part of our history, and how long it took us to give the vote to women is a shameful part of our history? Well, I think in 20 years, we're going to think that denying marriage to gays for so long is one of the great shames of our nation, too." That's from a teenager in Redneckville. She's our future--and Donohue, LaBarbera, and company are just desperate dinosaurs.
purepedantry | March 5, 2007The NYTimes magazine has an excellent article on the controversy within science as to the meaning of God. This is different from the cultural controversy as to the validity of Revelation because it is concerned with why religion may have evolved as opposed to whether it evolved.
Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is…
oracknows | March 4, 2007
I'm not sure if the group above, Clowns for Christ, Inc. (complete with Gideon the Parrot, Precious the Super Dog, and illustrated Bible messages, songs, and clown tricks), is the group responsible for the training videos that I posted yesterday. If it's not, though, apparently clowning for Christ is more widespread than I thought, because Googling "Clowns for Christ" or "Clowns for Jesus" brought up a lot of hits, including:
Clown Ministry
Clowns for Christ (a different group)
Clowning4Christ
Christ the Rebel Clown (which led to The Rebel Clown Army, which bills itself as wanting "to…
pharyngula | March 4, 2007Wilson wrote a nice book, The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), in which he argued that Christians should be leaders in good stewardship of the earth. Now some religious leaders have spoken out against such activities.
The Catholic church is babbling about an antichrist.
An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year's Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is "a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist".
After all, as we all know, when Christ returns he will be an isolationist industrialist who will rip…
pharyngula | March 3, 2007Some of you may recall that I got rather cranky with some sensitive Catholics who wanted to cancel a play — "The Pope and the Witch", currently playing on the Twin Cities campus. Unfortunately, although we'd hope to go, we had this succession of snowstorms that made traveling impractical this past week (I may still go at the end of this coming week, since the last day of the play coincides with the last day of classes before spring break and my birthday). Anyway, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press picked up on it. I put the article below the fold to preserve the fact that they quoted me, and to…
oracknows | March 3, 2007In which Christian "clowns" are being trained to invade a nursing home to "entertain" the unfortunate residents trapped within.
Money quote: "If people are in need of touch, you touch them."
Coming from clowns, that just sounds a bit creepy to me.
Or maybe, "Clowns can look a bit intimidating if you see a lot of them in one place." (Substitute "creepy" for "intimidating.")
See for yourself:
Worse, there's a Part 2, in which the clowns invade the personal rooms of the elderly nursing home residents and then use the residents in wheelchair races:
This stuff could scare the crap out of…
pharyngula | March 3, 2007Sometimes I think that what public education in this country really needs is a good general requirement for a course in comparative religion. I've thought that one obstacle, though, would be finding teachers who wouldn't warp it to proselytize for their favorite cult. It turns out that there's another major problem: parents will sue teachers who make their kids think about that which must be believed dogmatically.
On Jan. 31, McDonald gave the class, which consisted of juniors and seniors taking it as an elective, an assignment to read an Iroquois tale of creation, "The World on the Turtle's…
oracknows | March 2, 2007I was in Lansing, MI giving a talk at MSU the other day. Although time was very constrained and I didn't get to see much of the campus at all, on the way back to the airport, I saw a very odd fundamentalist billboard. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of it with my cell phone camera; so I'll have to do the best that I can by memory to tell you what it says.
The billboard said something like this (I could be off considerably in the exact phraseology, but this was the gist of the sign):
Forgive us, O Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Too long we have relied upon the automobile industry…
razib | February 28, 2007I was chatting with another Neville, and I repeated something which I have observed: Many atheists are as able to be rational about an analysis of religion as many opponents of the "War on Terror" are about a deeper understanding of Islam, Islamism and terrorism. Now, the interesting point is that viscerally, emotionally, I am neither a fan of religion or Islam. But, when speaking of these topics I believe it is important to put feelings aside, as much as humanly possible, and analyze with a cold eye. Allow the data to speak. Unfortunately, I've encountered situations where any discussion…
pharyngula | February 28, 2007Hey, you mean America isn't the sole refuge of pious war-mongers? I was sent this remarkable quote from Cardinal Meisner of Köln:
Einem Gott lobenden Soldaten kann man guten
Gewissens Verantwortung über Leben und Tod anderer
übertragen, weil sie
bei ihm gleichsam von der Heiligkeit Gottes mitabgesegnet sind … Wem käme es in den Sinn, Soldaten, die auch Beter sind , dann
noch als Mörder zu diskriminieren. Nein, in betenden Händen ist die
Waffe vor
Mißbrauch sicher.
It begins "One can in good conscience give a God-praising soldier responsibility over the life and death of others" and ends with…
pharyngula | February 27, 2007Because cell phones are godless, evil tools of Satan and the secular world. It makes me want to run out and buy 3 or 4.
(via Improbable Research)
pharyngula | February 27, 2007Here I've been thinking of getting a nice tattoo (something discreet and subtle, like an octopus someplace you'll never see it), and then I learn that for the sake of my health, I better not. After all, some good Christian doctor might refuse to help me when I'm sick. Dr Gary Merrill, who proudly proclaims his Christian faith, turned away a little girl with an ear infection because her mother had a tattoo.
…Dr. Gary Merrill wouldn't treat her daughter for an ear infection because Tasha, the mother, has tattoos.
The writing is on the wall—literally: "This is a private office. Appearance and…