religion
pharyngula | December 12, 2009I had no idea cartoonists wielded such vast power. First it was the Danish cartoons that outraged the Muslim community, and now an Austrian named Manfred Deix has drawn the ire of the Catholics: the Viennese archdiocese has 'tattled' on him to the public prosecutor for violating the National Socialist Prohibition Act and for degrading religion (it's in German; there is a horrible Google translation).
He has mocked the EU's ban on crucifixes in the classroom with a cartoon that argues that the "ban shall be deftly circumvented," and which includes a "multicultural compromise" — Jesus on a…
razib | December 10, 2009A friend pointed me to a new Pew survey, Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion. It shows the general finding that though Americans are a religious people, they're moderately ecumenical in their practices and beliefs. I was concerned in particular though with the resurgence of supernatural beliefs with the decline of institutional religious orthodoxy.
The back story to this is that many psychologists posit that humans have an innate predisposition toward supernatural beliefs because of the cognitive biases we're hardwired with. For example, it isn't a coincidence that almost all human…
pharyngula | December 9, 2009What a horrible, sad waste of a life: Tillmon Webb injured his knee, couldn't afford to get it treated, and sat in a recliner for 8 months, praying for healing. His saintly (and I don't mean that in a complimentary sense) wife tended to him as he rotted to death in the chair.
"He read his Bible daily, he spent his full focus on God," said Webb. "And he was literally waiting and praying for a Job miracle. If anybody knows the Bible and knows Job, he really and fully believed that God was going to heal him just like he did Job, because he said he couldn't think of a better testimony to go out…
jrosenhouse | December 8, 2009Sorry for the lack of blogging. It is final exams week around here, which means busy, busy, busy. It certainly has not been for lack of blog fodder. For example, have a look at this post from P.Z. Myers. Essential reading.
So how about another Bertrand Russell quote? Like the last one, this is from his book Religion and Science It is the most perfect statement I know of a view I have expressed imperfectly here on many occasions:
I come now to the last question in our discussion of Cosmic Purpose, namely is what has happened hitherto evidence of the good intentions of the universe?…
razib | December 6, 2009At my other weblog I looked at some of the data on the international data on religion. There are two positions in regards to religious trends which always crop up.
* That in the medium-to-long term religion, in particular supernatural religion, will disappear.
* That in the short-to-medium term we are in the midst of a "religious revival."
The first position has been held more or less by some intellectuals since the Enlightenment. The second position is something that I'm familiar with contemporaneously. The reality is that the world is not going through a revival in religiosity if by…
emjohnson | December 6, 2009Nonreligious Nerd is hosting the latest edition (we're up to #130 now) of the most ungodly carnival in the blogosphere. Take a moment in between hymns to check out the selections on your iPhone. Just tell the other parishioners that you're praying for them.
grrlscientist | December 6, 2009tags: debate, catholics, religion, atheism, Zeinab Badawi, Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens, John Onaiyekan, Ann Widdecombe, BBC News, streaming video
This debate centers on the statement: The Catholic Church is a force for good. Presenting this debate is Zeinab Badawi and BBC News. Arguing for this statement is Archbishop John Onaiyekan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja and the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, and Ann Widdecombe MP, a Member of Parliament for 20 years. Arguing against the statement is Christopher Hitchens, an English-American author and journalist,…
grrlscientist | December 5, 2009tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, Islam, Islam Not A Religion, Pat Robinson, streaming video
A Muslim takes on Pat Robertson and his form of fundamentalist wingnuttery known as "evangelical religion". Pat Robinson demonstrates nicely that even religious people of different denominations do not respect each other even though they supposedly are on the same side. They are so busy pointing fingers and making judgments about each others' faith that it's beyond silly for them to try to convert atheists .. because they can't agree as to which religion is "the one true faith" nor can…
gregladen | December 5, 2009"We really have this strong belief [about vaccination]. If it wasn't that strong I would never jeopardize my job, knowing I have five kids, a wife, a mortgage. That's how deeply we feel about this." Orf so say's Christian Gary Cowlay, one of several individuals fired from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for refusal to get an H1N1 vaccine.
The story is here, and Phil Plait is talking about it here.
Cowlay's statement quoted above is both outrageous and typical. It is outrageous because this is a man insisting that it is OK for him to endanger the lives of the very ill children in…
gregladen | December 5, 2009My review.
The last movie of this genre I watched had Christopher Lee as the Werewolf Hunter. In this movie, the Werewolves engaged in a periodic orgy in which a newly converted nubile female would would be converted into a wolf-like form to have repeated dog-like copulations with a male vampire-wolf counterpart under the observation of the king and/or queen vampire and a dwarf. Or something like that. I came in during the middle of the movie and never quite got it. But it was obvious, and this is always true in traditional vampire and werewolf movies, that the Catholic Church is very…
pharyngula | December 5, 2009Can you bear yet another case of religion-rationalized child abuse?
Over three months in 2006, as her five children grew more emaciated and listless by the day, Estelle Walker made no move to find a job, no effort to scrounge up a meal, her kids told a jury yesterday.
"We were supposed to wait for God to provide," said Walker's oldest daughter, now 21. "And that's what we did."
At one point, the daughter said, she and her siblings went 11 days without food. When police were at last summoned to the Sussex County cabin by neighbors, investigators found the children so malnourished they had…
razib | December 4, 2009One thesis in regards to the vitality of religions is that state sponsorship tends to result in disaffection because public monopolies offer sub-standard product. In contrast, separation between the public sector and religion results in a free market of ideas which promotes vigorous diversity and competition which satisfies the tastes of all (or nearly all).
Below is a map from Wikipedia which shows "state religions" by geography. I don't think I accept the predictive power of the thesis above....
How you define "state religion" can be a little sketchy, but usually it has to be privileges…
pharyngula | December 1, 2009So true and so hilarious: a study has found that god speaks with a remarkably egocentric voice. In tests that asked people what god's opinion of various matters was, the unsurprising discovery was that it was the same as the individual's opinion — and of course every person's opinion was different. You'd expect some consistency if they were all hearing god's word, you would think!
It fits with the typical vision of the sockpuppeteer, too: the loser whose opinions are indefensible, so he invents an army of aliases to agree with him. And what more powerful sockpuppet could there be than to have…
gregladen | December 1, 2009When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
Imagine the following two alternative scenarios.
Alternative Universe One
The Scene: Visiting Nurses Inc. VNI contracts with health care providers to send trained visiting nurses around to check in on newly minted babies and their parents. This is standard procedure in many health care plans, and of course, VNI wants to develop and maintain…
jrosenhouse | November 30, 2009Here's an interesting blog post written by a biochemistry professor at Seattle Pacific University. I call attention to it for two reasons. First, it is a harshly negative, but also highly substantive, review of Stephen Meyer's ID manifesto Signature in the Cell, written from a Christian perspective:
So w/r/t this whole book you've just written, about how the Creator must be inferred to explain the origin of DNA? I very much wish you were right.
But you aren't.
I don't say this because I fear for my job. I have a feeling I could have a very nice job at the Discovery Institute if I pushed…
laelaps | November 30, 2009
Eden, from The World Before the Deluge.
At least I know that, if I fail at everything else in life, I could write a book claiming to reconcile science and Christianity. People love them. No matter how many times the same old talking points are trotted out there always seems to be room for one more volume on the subject. And even if readers do not entirely agree with the content of such books many are still comforted by their existence. Among the "Things Christians Like" is to see scientists saying that hard evidence from nature supports Christian beliefs.
I do not say this to belittle the…
jrosenhouse | November 30, 2009Via Jerry Coyne I came across this brief essay from Michael Shermer on the subject of science and religion. Here's the part that jumped out at me:
If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe -- 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.
Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The…
edyong | November 30, 2009For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.
Psychological studies have found that people are always a tad egocentric when considering other people's mindsets. They use their own beliefs as a starting point…
gregladen | November 29, 2009I agree with almost nothing substantive that he says but many people find the discussion interesting: