religion
gregladen | November 3, 2009Please do me a favor. Start collecting those bogus-ized copies of Darwin's Origin being distributed by Ray Comfort. We're low on firewood up at the cabin. Oh, and if you see Ray, puke on his shoes for me, OK?
It's not that I like burning books. But this is not burning books. When Ray Comfort distributes a faked-up copy of The Origin, he's committing a kind of intellectual violence. Tossing the books into the wood stove is a parry.
If you want to reduce the effects of global warming, you could always bury them in your garden thus sequestering the carbon they are made from.
Here are the…
pharyngula | November 3, 2009Apparently, if you die for Allah, the bullets ripping through your body will feel like angels' kisses, and the first thing that happens when you pop into heaven is that a horny black-eyed virgin (or two! Or 72!) will jump your bones. Although, actually, these homely losers for Mohammed don't actually know any of that, they're just lying to convince people who are dumber than they are to die for their cause.
Something else to keep in mind: when the Islamic countries push anti-blasphemy laws in the UN, what they're actually demanding is that no one have the right to state that these life-…
gregladen | November 2, 2009Not all of them, of course. But I really am getting annoyed that the supposedly "normal" Christians are not doing a better job at taking down people like "Amber" at "Christwire" who tells us that she is "Extremely Terrified Of Chinese People ... but I'm not a racist."
The article in question is painful to read. Very very painful. Eric Michael Johnson addresses it quite nicely here. Right now I lack the patience to do what Eric has done. Please check out his overview.
The motto of this blog ... Christwire.org ... is "Conservative Values for an Unsaved World."
That says it all.
emjohnson | November 2, 2009Caught your attention, didn't it? Mine too. This morning I came across Steve Silberman's twitter headline pointing out that when people typed "I Am Extremely" into the Google search bar, one of the top suggestions was "Terrified of Chinese People." Fascinated to see what fools these mortals be, I clicked the link only to discover an article on Christwire that was actually able to claim that they were terrified of a racial group but that this didn't mean they were racist. Confused? You're not alone. Just take a quick look at some of the extremely confused statements that attracted nearly…
pharyngula | November 2, 2009Jerry Coyne missed one: he lists a few annoying columnists in the Guardian, Andrew Brown and Madeleine Bunting, but I guess he didn't notice that Michael Ruse just posted a whine about Dawkins and other atheists. Well, a few of us: he mentions Dawkins, Dennett, Coyne, and me as the people who bring atheism into disrepute. We're in a schism, don't you know; I just wish he'd used the term "Deep Rifts", since that seems to be the fashionable phrase for everyone who wants to find consolation in the imminent demise of the New Atheist movement (to which we have to reply that we're very fond of our…
grrlscientist | November 1, 2009tags: religion, belief system, ethics, values, lifestyle
Here's my results from Belief-o-matic, an online questionnaire that uses a series of 20 questions to help identify your belief system;
What did this quiz tell you your belief system should be?
gregladen | November 1, 2009This is has been around the internet, most notably HERE, where most people have seen it already.
But, just in case you have not seen it and are having religious angst on this fine Sunday morning, check it out:
I think it will be interesting for many people to see where they would flow on this chart at various changes in your life. For example, I was raised a Catholic. Then I went through my semi-agnostic experimental phase (in seventh grade) which would have probably led me to "Hindu" if there were any decent Indian restaurants where I grew up.
I am uncomfortable with what appears to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2009Some thoughts on the Theology of Jerks. Earlier this week, there was some minor amusement over Christian scholar Richard Beck's claim, at his blog Experimental Theology, that Christians (presumably he means fundamentalists) are lousy tippers:
Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the…
grrlscientist | November 1, 2009tags: religion, evangelism, fundamentalism, belief systems, ray comfort, streaming video
Ray Comfort's ministry hits a snag. It's all going so well, when suddenly.... Way of the Master - but who's the master?
razib | October 31, 2009I rarely post much political commentary here, because it would add little value as I have nothing distinctive to say in that domain. At Secular Right I am wont to do data analysis because I think data is something that needs to be injected into political discussions and commentary. But in any case, today I put up an essay, Religious diversity & its discontents. In it I make clear my distaste for multiculturalism, so if you are a reader who would find such opinions to your distaste, I invite you not to click! My own opinion is that multiculturalism as it is presented is not a noble lie,…
gregladen | October 31, 2009"The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:
Sex with demons
Orgies between animals and humans
Animal and human sacrifices
Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
Revel nights
Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant."
Those are the words of Christian Writer Kimberly Daniels, in a piece produced for the Christian Broadcasting Network (hat tip: Pharyngula…
razib | October 31, 2009Spotted Piglet Hiccups: Boozy Breslin Clashes With Mosque:
The much-hyped, soon-to-open Breslin restaurant, situated in the 12-story Ace Hotel on Broadway and 29th, is giving members of the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street some agita. "Five times a day, there's a hundred cabs on the street--the good news is you can always get a cab," co-owner Ken Friedman told the Transom the other evening. He said some mosque visitors "object to seeing people drink alcohol."
After the recent FergusStock, a festival during which famed British chef Fergus Henderson cooked whole pigs for a rapt crowd…
emjohnson | October 30, 2009It's been an unusually busy week, so I apologize for the lack of original posts, but I just came upon Christopher Hitchens' latest piece in Slate reflecting on the many debates he's had with religious proponents in the last few years. His new film, Collision, looks fascinating and I look forward to reviewing it.
What struck me in Hitchens' article, and what I've found when discussing religion with theists as well, is how few of them hold literally to the doctrine that they espouse. It is one of the curious aspects of religion today that people will join movements insisting that religion be…
razib | October 30, 2009Ruchira Paul has a post up, "Religious, superstitious, nonsense" and other harsh words. The point at issue is the fact that a teacher who expressed anti-Creationist views in harsh tones was sued. Ruchira asks somewhat rhetorically as to the sort of things parochial schools say about other religions and atheists. The bigger issue is one of public decorum, and decorum is very contextual. When my 7th grade teacher had us read Medea she explained a bit about the context of Greek society, including the nature of their religion. She spoke of "their gods" and "our God." Her reference to "our God"…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of "alternative" medicine have already done through Senator Tom Harkin, and hijack the health care reform process to codify their preferred unscientific health care modalities as legitimate after science has…
pharyngula | October 27, 2009Someone tell him that that is no status to which one should aspire. He's just written a brief, cranky complaint about Dawkins' righteous smackdown of the Catholic church. Here's the totality of it.
Richard Dawkins's latest attack on the Catholic Church is worthy of a dribbling loony on the top of a bus. He calls the Church "the greatest force for evil in the world", "an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture" and describes it "dragging its skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp". (Pimps in skirts - that's a new one.) And all in The Washington Post…
pharyngula | October 27, 2009At least, that's the outcome of a court decision in France, where Scientology was guilty of fraud and got slapped with a few fines, which they'll scrape out of the pockets of their gullible followers.
It's nice, I'm not going to complain, but I'll be more impressed when they apply the same reasoning to the Catholic Church. Why do French authorities still allow that con-game called Lourdes, for instance, to continue?
pharyngula | October 27, 2009Apparently, the Sunday brunch-after-church crowd has an awful reputation for being bad tippers. Somehow, I'm not surprised. But even fellow Christians have noticed and find fault with them.
Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd…