religion
gregladen | September 20, 2009Yay!!! Wooohooo!! Yipeeeee!!!!
OK, let's see what Kirk has to say about it:
pharyngula | September 20, 2009My former plan for a prosperous retirement plan involved suddenly finding Jesus and winning a Templeton Prize, but it always left an unpleasant taste in mouth. Sure, I'd be rich, but to do it I'd have to stand up in front of the whole world and pretend to be an addled moron. It was going to take a lot of drinks-in-coconuts-with-umbrellas to wash that indignity into unawareness, you know.
But now I have a new plan that leaves my dignity mostly uncompromised! Well, somewhat compromised. Here's the idea:
Go to England.
Chat up a few vicars.
Become horribly offended that they are not…
pharyngula | September 20, 2009I have learned something new today: you can get a Ph.D. in converting the heathen!
DEVELOPING A CHURCH PLANTING MOVEMENT IN INDIA
By DANE WINSTEAD FOWLKES
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the subject
MISSIOLOGY
at the UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE
SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR PIETER VERSTER
November 2004
Here's the abstract, if you've got a hankerin' to head on over to India and undermine the Hindu religion, it might be useful.
This dissertation acknowledges the need for Church Planting
Movements among the unreached peoples of India. Of…
terrasig | September 20, 2009I'm not drinking these days but scribbler50 at Behind the Stick is still my favorite bartender.
This week, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Yea verily, go forth this morning and read.
grrlscientist | September 20, 2009tags: religion, violence, genocide, sexism, fundamentalism, MtlRedAtheist, streaming video
The story of Adam and Eve is full of nonsense that shows the Biblical god to be unfair, sadistic, sexist. He creates women for man's use. He ordains man to rule over women. He cursed women to have painful child birth and damned all humanity to pain and suffering on Earth as well as in Hell, because Adam and Eve did something he considered wrong, even though they had no knowledge of good and evil, as described in the story. How cruel.
If we can all accept this as a myth, the story would be entertaining,…
grrlscientist | September 19, 2009tags: religion, violence, mental illness, fundamentalism, Mitchell and Webb, streaming video
This video is a Godless Comedy created by That Mitchell and Webb Look about the myth of Abraham and Isaac .. if an American did this today, he'd be placed in a mental institution for hearing voices that command him to murder his own son. Charming.
jrosenhouse | September 18, 2009The other day I mentioned the book The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose, about a Brown Univeristy student who transfers to Liberty University for a semester. The book has all sorts of quotable nuggets, but I especially got a kick out of the following one. I should mention that Roose changed all the names of the people he is describing.
On Monday night, the radio debate between Dr. Caner [a professor at Liberty] and the Rational Response Squad finally comes to pass.
I listened to the debate -- all three hours and forty minutes of it -- and it was time well spent. The Rational Response…
gregladen | September 18, 2009WPTV.COM has a poll asking "Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?" and the possible answers are "yes" and "no." Which I guess means they are not really asking an "either/or" question although it is worded that way. Anyway, this relates to THIS STORY about people who work for a school system who are currently in trouble for contempt of court. Contempt of court is a jail-able offense, and it is NOT "offering prayer in public schools."
Of course, it is true that these individuals were originally in trouble for violating the First Amendment Rights of the…
emjohnson | September 18, 2009
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the first of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
As expected, the apologists for unreason who promote Intelligent Design have jumped on the recent article in The New Yorker about bonobos. This inspired me to write at more length about the article since this is a species I've studied closely for the last two years. Denyse O'Leary at Uncommon Descent uses the article to proudly…
jrosenhouse | September 17, 2009Spend any time immersing yourself in science/religion disputes and you will quickly encounter the idea that “science is not the only way of knowing.” Nearly always this is intended as a way of carving out intellectual space for religion. For atheists like me this claim raises a red flag. I want to know what ways of knowing religion contributes to the discussion, and what sorts of things we learn from these methods. The problem is that one of the biggest ideas religion offers, especially in the West, is that of revelation. Apparently God sometimes talks directly to certain human beings,…
gregladen | September 17, 2009"[T]here will come a day when the speaker [of the United States House of Representatives] will be hauled into federal court and threatened with jail because she dares to stand at that podium .. and ask the chaplain to start our day with the prayer."
Not soon enough, I'm afraid.
These words were uttered by Virginia Rep J. Randy Forbes in reference to a trial going on now in Florida in which two sdhool official are facing charges for violation of the Constitution of the United States of America. Which part of The Constitution? The part that Republicans, Right Wingers, Libertarians and…
gregladen | September 17, 2009Steve Harvey is cool with me being an idiot. And you too, likely (being an idiot that is).
What I want to know is this: If there are so many smart people in this world, why are there still Steve Harvey??????
hat tip
pharyngula | September 17, 2009Frank Schaeffer was on fire in this interview with Rachel Maddow, prompted by a bizarre NJ poll that showed 35% of the conservatives in that state believe Obama is the anti-christ. Heh, "We have a village idiot in this country, it's called fundamentalist Christianity". Gold star for Schaeffer!
He's right. Those are minds that are lost, and we have to move past them.
gregladen | September 17, 2009We know there is a link between education, church going behavior, and the inability or unwillingness to accept that evolution is real and that humans evolved. But what exactly is the relationship? I think the following diagram includes the correct answer, but I'm not sure which one it is:
What am I missing?
emjohnson | September 17, 2009
Darwin evicts a Social Darwinist and Eugenicist from his house / Northwestern Univ.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, author of such classic works as Chimpanzee Politics, Peacemaking Among Primates, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape is now coming out with his new book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. My review of this work will be out early next week to mark the book's national release on September 22. Today and in the next few days I will be reposting pieces I've written over the years on the…
pharyngula | September 17, 2009A recent survey that correlated the degree of fundamentalism, as measured by positive responses to questions about the absolute, literal truth of the Bible, and teenage birth rates, has discovered something we all suspected all along: fundie kids are getting pregnant despite their stern, restrictive upbringing. There are caveats, of course, and some implied messages here.
However, the results don't say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable…
jrosenhouse | September 16, 2009I'm currently reading the book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose. Roose was a student at Brown University (my alma mater!) when he decided he wanted to learn more about the culture of evangelical Christianity. So he transferred to Liberty University for a semester.
I am only about a third of the way through the book and will probably post a full review when I have finished it. For now, though, I would like to post one brief excerpt that really jumped out at me. Roose is listing, in bullet point fashion, certain things “Liberty really…
grrlscientist | September 15, 2009This is DJ Michelangelo Signorile's interview with Pastor Steven L. Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Temple, AZ. In this interview, the pastor proclaims that he prays for President Obama to die, calls for the execution of gays and says it is not be murder if a group of gays and lesbians were gunned down with a machine gun, or if the president were assassinated. Further, this man of god does not believe the murder of Dr. George Tiller was murder. Not only that, but this man then went on to attack his (gay) interviewer insisting he must be "molesting children" and saying that he…
pharyngula | September 15, 2009We've got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she's linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan.
Muthee is an international celebrity for his role in a series of documentary videos, seen by millions worldwide, that claim Christians can reduce crime, murder, traffic accidents, addiction, and environmental degradation by driving out, from cities and towns, demon spirits and accused witches.
I am most…