religion

The success of the New Atheist books has spawned an industry of book-length, pro-religion replies. I have read quite a few of them at this point, and have emerged far more confident in my atheism as a result. Some of the books, like David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion, were obviously the work of hacks just trying to cash in. Others, like Alister and Joanna McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion or John Haught's God and the New Atheism were written by folks who I regard as serious scholars. That they failed so completely to make a cogent case against any of Dawkins' (or Hitchens' or Harris')…
Well, not really. He just wants to sell some books there. But don't tell that to the editors at The Times. None of Professor Dawkins' books, on evolution as well as religion, has ever been translated into Arabic, and his work has been heavily censored in Turkey. In an interview with The Times, he said that popularising evolution in the Islamic world, where creationist beliefs are strong, was a challenge he is keen to take up. "To be a bestseller in a Muslim country would be a personal triumph," he said. Last year, the Islamic creationist Harun Yahya (aka Adnan Oktar) successfully had…
According to the constitutions of the United States and the State of Kentucky, church and state must remain separate. But then the Kentucky Legislature passed a homeland security related bill that stated that the security of the Commonwealth (State) depends on Almighty God. That wording was thrown out yesterday by a Kentucky Judge. This was the outcome of a lawsuit by ten residence of Kentucky and the American Atheists. The stte Attorney General has not decided if he will appeal. Oh, do it, do it, do it!!! Appeal this one!!! Might as well get this cut and dry decision as high up as it can…
Kentucky had a law on its books requiring the department of homeland security to honor the Christian god, claiming that "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God." Note the past tense, "had". The silly law has been struck down as unconstitutional. Good for Kentucky!
Over at Jeffrey Goldberg's blog we find a brief interview with Congressman Henry Waxman about how his Jewish faith informs his political views: Tali Yahalom: You are quoted as saying that many of your American values are "synonymous" with your Jewish values. Can you talk about that? Henry Waxman: Jewish values place a great emphasis on compassion and trying to help other people, and the doctrine of tikkun olam, trying to repair the world -- this of course is a requirement on individuals but also on the community. One way for people to act in a communal sense and to respond to the needs of…
People often tell me that I have a skewed view of religion because of my frequent participation in creationist gatherings. Yes, obviously, the fundamentalists are out of their minds, and it is discouraging that they give religion a bad name generally. But there is also a rich body of serious, probing work in Christian theology that is full of nuance and texture. Or so I am told. I have yet to encounter it, and not for lack of looking. To me it always seems like an awful lot of intellectual energy wasted on a foolish and pointless project. Part of the problem is that often, when I read…
Traditional Islam is so cool because it really sticks with the old ways, and that's quaint. But it should be allowed to do this only in a museum where it might be safely kept away from actual people. Fathima Rifqa Bary is the 17-year-old girl who converted from Islam to Christianity. She packed up her things and ran away to Florida because she feared an honor killing -- her own family members killing her because of what she had done. Her parents say they just want her back safely, but reports say that her mother said Fathima was "dead to her". The girl also said her father threatened to…
Shorter Robert Wright: All we have to do to end the conflict between science and religion is convert the Christians to deists and get the scientists to pretend that evolution is teleological! Who knew it would be so easy? Unfortunately, from my perspective, knowledge is not one of those things on which one can compromise — you've either got evidence for something, or you don't. We do not have evidence for purpose in evolution, and if anything, all the evidence is against the idea that evolution has a direction or that natural selection can be anything but an unguided response to local…
Brace yourselves: Glenn Moon is plainly mentally ill, but what are we to make of Pastor Steve Anderson? He has a job, he has a congregation, people actually respect him…but if you go to that link, you will hear the most astonishingly deranged, hateful, creepy nonsense in his sermons. It's all bible-based, too. You can use that vile old book to support any evil you can imagine, I think.
Or at least that's the joke. Interesting post from Tom Rees which illustrates the utility of cross-cultural tests of general theories-of-religion. Rees notes: One of the leading theories of why religion is so popular goes by the ominous name of 'Terror Management Theory'. Put simply, this is the idea that people turn to religion to ease their fear of death. ... While Christians did indeed have a lower death anxiety than the non-religious, Muslims did not. In fact, their death anxiety was markedly higher than both the other groups. When the participants were asked to explain why they felt the…
There is a good argument here for closing down government programs for monitoring weather. And volcanoes. And stuff. Lou has all the wonderful amazing details here.
Although I was born in Detroit itself, like so many Detroiters in the 1970s my family moved to a suburb of Detroit called Livonia when I was 10. I haven't lived in Livonia in nearly 25 years, but my parents still live there in the same house where I spent my teen years. So the politics of the town occasionally still piques my interest. Sometimes they turn really nutty, such as this year's City Council election. The city posted videos of all the candidates answering the following questions: The following are 10 of the 11 candidates running in the Livonia City Council Primary election on…
Allow me to lay it out as simply as I can. It is my view that religion and science are incompatible in a very specific and important way. I say this as someone who previously drank the Kool-Aid and spent countless hours studying what was described to me as the Holy Spirit. I have been confirmed in the Lutheran tradition and have recited the Nicene Creed so often throughout my life that, as an adult, I no longer paid any attention to what the words were saying. They came out of me as rote, like a wind-up monkey who clapped his symbols at the turn of a crank. We believe in one God, the…
tags: Why Do People Laugh at Creationists? , atheism, religion, water, streaming video The only people who are so stupid as to not understand the answer to that question are the creationists themselves.
tags: cultural observations, Lewis Black, travel, health insurance, humor, funny, fucking hilarious, streaming video Bill Maher talks about the relationship between religion and political office, noting that most Americans would not vote for a political candidate who does not believe in a god of some sort.
tags: The Evolution of God, atheism, religion, DNA, streaming video This video below the jump is an interview with Robert Wright, the author of the book, The Evolution of God. Amazingly, the author is NOT an atheist! The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Robert Wright www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests
UK Sikhs accuse BBC of racism: "We should not be paying a licence fee for promoting the ignorance-based ramblings of those bent on self-promotion who sneer at Asian religion and culture," said Hardeep Singh, a spokesman of the Sikh Media Monitoring Group, which accused BBC's Asian Network of being insensitive towards listeners from the minority community. The Sikh Group has written to the BBC asking for a full transcript of Adil Ray's show, which was removed from their website after threats from angry Sikh listeners who accused the popular Muslim presenter of denigrating the "kirpan" dagger…
In their national convention in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voted to allow gay pastors. Good for them. I guess that lightning bolt that struck the convention center was a warning from god to the intolerant conservative wing of the church that he loves his sexy homosexual worshippers, too. Now we just have to hope that the residents of Kansas and Oklahoma and all those bible-belt states will someday figure out that he's zapping them with lightning and tornadoes because he loves evolution, too.
Mehta's blog post in which he exposed Higgins' irresponsible and absurd claims has yielded a singularly incoherent babbling response. Is there any doubt that The Illinois Family In Italics Institute should be deeply embarrassed? Here's the "open letter." Ick.