religion
razib | October 31, 2006Apropos of Alex's post, from The Barna Group, A New Generation of Adults Bends Moral and Sexual Rules to Their Liking:
To what extent does faith make a difference among Busters? The research shows that born again Busters - a group defined not based upon self-identification with the "born again" label but based upon their beliefs about Jesus Christ and regarding life after death - were different from non-born again young adults on some issues. Born again Busters were somewhat less likely to illegally download music, to smoke, to view pornography, to purchase a lottery ticket, or to use…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2006While I don't think arguing for or against religious particulars is something any political party should adopt a few days before an election (or should be a political issue at all, for that matter), PZ is absolutely right when he says that Robertson and his ilk should be called out for the foolish bigots that they are. We wouldn't tolerate racially-based hatred (Got Macaca?), so why should we tolerate 'faith-based' hatred? O'Donnell was doing what was needed: staking out the flank.
If politicians won't do anything while El Jefe Maximo wipes his ass with the First, Fourth, Fifth Amendment,…
jrosenhouse | October 31, 2006Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson wrote this lengthy review of The God Delusion for Harpers Magazine. She was unimpressed.
The review weighs in at 4599 words, but you'll find yourself almost a thousand words in before hitting anything substantive about Dawkins' book. Prior to that it's just a lot of snideness about how seriously Dawkins takes himself, about how he's preaching to the choir, and about what a crazed Darwinian fundamentalist he is. In this portion of the review, Robinson seems more interested in showing off how well she writes than in making actual points.…
pharyngula | October 31, 2006If you're a fan of mangled philosophy and patent falsehoods, you really must read the Biblical view of science. It's crazily disconnected from anything close to describing how science actually works.
What then is the Biblical view of science? Science enables us to fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:28: "Then God blessed them [Adam and Eve], and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the Earth.' " Science gives us directions for doing things, or "…
jrosenhouse | October 30, 2006Physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote Nature's review of The God Delusion. The review itself is mixed: strong praise for parts of the book, exasperated criticism for others. But the following two paragraphs are what caught my eye:
Dawkins the preacher is less seductive. And make no mistake: this book is, for the most part, a well-referenced sermon. I just have no idea who the intended parishioners might be. In his preface, Dawkins claims he hopes to reach religious people who might have misgivings, either about the teachings of their faith or about the negative impact of religion in the modern…
jrosenhouse | October 30, 2006The reviews of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion are coming in, and they are mostly negative. That was predictable. Everyone knows, after all, that Dawkins is just one of those fanatical, frothing at the mouth atheists, who doesn't understand that religion is a beautiful and complex thing, despite the excesses of many of its practitioners. He's one of those silly people who believe logic and reason should be brought to bear on “The God Question,” despite the fact that sophisticated theologians gave up that approach long ago.
So I'm not surprised that the main reaction to Dawkins' book has…
oracknows | October 29, 2006It seems to be the time of the year for this sort of thing.
Yes, I realize that the Harry Potter novels have come under attack from various fundamentalist Christians, who view them as somehow indoctrinating children into witchcraft, Wicca, demon worship, or whatever. I also realize that I may be a bit behind the times on this story. But, with Halloween coming up and all, I thought I'd mention it anyway, because this time one such parent, Laura Mallory, has taken her beef with Harry Potter all the way to her state Board of Education in Georgia, after having been slapped down before in her…
pharyngula | October 29, 2006Here's a real deal for you all: if you watch this video, you'll have taken care of all your religious obligations for the day and are exempted from having to go to church this morning!
razib | October 28, 2006The Washington Post has a fun profile of Sam Harris. This part cracked me up:
"If the Koran were exactly the same," he said, toward the end of the night, "and there were just one line added to it, and the line said, 'If you see a red-haired woman on your lawn at sunset, kill her,' I can tell you what kind of world we'd live in. We'd live in a world where red-haired women would be killed often. We'd live in a world where people like yourself" -- and here Harris gestures to his opponent, Oliver McTernan -- "would say, 'That's not the true Islam.' Twenty women in Baghdad would have their heads…
pharyngula | October 28, 2006The Republicans have a secret weapon, one that is going to be unstoppable, and probably means they are going to dominate both houses of Congress. Phil has discovered (via Randi, who also has another useful item) the most potent electoral tool in the Republican arsenal—better than fear and hate, even more powerful than Diebold—I'm telling you, this thing exceeds the awe-inspiring awesome awesomeness of magnetic "support the troops" ribbons for your car. It's the Presidential Prayer Team. Sign up, and you will get specific instructions on exactly what to tell God. After all, if we can get a…
purepedantry | October 27, 2006I don't really have time to post stuff today, but this post by Chad at Uncertain Principles is really good. It relates the failure to fully disprove Einstein's idea of Local Hidden Variables (read it and he will explain) to Richard Dawkins failure to fully address ontological arguments for the existence of God:
The point is, though, that those loopholes are still there. Any responsible treatment of the subject has to acknowledge them. And, more importantly, anyone who wants to design a new experiment to test Bell's theorem needs to account for those loopholes. Tightening the existing bounds…
pharyngula | October 24, 2006Did anyone else get this spam from "Extreme Evangelism", or am I just special?
What if I told you that you could hold an event for your community and that 90% of the people who attended would be unsaved. What if I then told you that in most communities at least 1000 people would show up. And what if during that event on average 100 people would give their heart to Jesus??? How long does it take your church to get 100 people saved? Think of the church growth possibilities! Its an outdoor event so even churches without large facilities can participate! Now what if I were to tell you that our…
oracknows | October 23, 2006...not according to this article:
If 40 percent of Americans refuse to believe that humans evolved from earlier hominids, how many will accept that the book we know as the Bible evolved from earlier texts and was not handed down, in toto, by God in its present form?
The fossil evidence for human evolution is permanently on display at the American Museum of Natural History. Hard evidence that the Bible took its present shape over centuries will be on display for the next 11 weeks, from today through Jan. 7, across the Mall at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
They are rarer than…
razib | October 21, 2006The comments below about Muslims in Europe have continued to come in, so I figured I would put a new post up and allow further comments here on the front page. On my other blog I have another post on the veil. Two points:
1) It seems like "New Labor" has decided to drop the PC-veil, so to speak, and take a hard line on Islamic separatism. This is somewhat rich since the government itself in the 90s helped give succor to "community groups" like the Muslim Council of Britain which were retarding the process of assimilation (in fact, they had an interest to perpetuate separation since it…
mikethemadbiologist | October 21, 2006
...and Donald Rumsfeld? From the AP:
"He [Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Ordinarily, I would simply think that this is more Republican cynicism about religion, but I'm not so sure.
Why? Because crazy-ass religiosity has been observed elsewhere:
1) At the Air Force Academy, cadets were subject to illegal prosleytizing by USAF chaplains (for more updates, check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation blog).
2) The idiocy about atheism uttered by Pat Tillman's…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2006
Some stupid is so powerful that it can only be viewed safely through the StupidViewer 9000
(from here)
Here's a joke: a Republican staffer of a conservative Christian Republican goes into a synagogue and tells the congregation that his candidate is more Jewish than they are. It's not very funny, and, sadly, it's true. You see, Republican Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Arizona has a slight Jewish problem.
It started when he supported Henry Ford's Americanization program, claiming that Ford's program was only trying to get immigrants to speak English. What is the Americanization program?…
clock | October 18, 2006This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question is:
A reader asks: Is severely regulating your diet for a month each year, as Muslims do during Ramadan, good for you?
There is no way I can get out of this one! As far as I know, I am the only one here who actually did research on fasting! Mind you, it's been about 5 years since I last delved deep into the literature on the effects of fasting and feeding on various body functions, mainly body temperature and circadian rhythms, but I can try to pull something out of my heels now.
I'll try to somehow systematize this, by breaking the problem down…
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2006Did you ever think in 1999 that Congress would pass a bill, and that a President would sign a bill that eliminates habeas corpus at the whim of the president? I sure as hell didn't. This is why the utter warping of our political system by the mindless Christopath Uruk-hai, the anti-gay bigots, and the blastula liberationists is so devastating: because it allows other forms of extremism such as the Federalist Society and those who believe in the 'unitary executive' to flourish unchecked.
From Keith Olbermann:
OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping…
razib | October 17, 2006Sunn vs. Shia on the other blog. My conclusion:
Of course, this isn't the sort of thing that is interesting to most people. It would obviously be best if government officials who played a role in making decisions where this knowledge would be critical would be aware of the details. But I'm not holding my breath, my own experience on this and other blogs is that when it comes to opinions about Islam and the Middle East research is deemed unnecessary and the empires of opinion conquer all (in fact, I have been told that knowing too much is an impediment to proper understanding, and though I…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2006While there's been a lot of discussion about David Kuo's book Tempting Faith, the wee lil' Mad Biologist seems to be the only one who has viewed the intentional rejection of proposals from non-Christian religious organizations as religious discrimination ('no Jews need apply'). This discrimination is why funding faith-based organizations based on their religiosity and not on what they would to do advance the interest of the Republic is so odious.
At a personal level, it represents the failure of individual conservatives: certain people thought it was appropriate to discriminate against…