religion
pharyngula | May 6, 2009Five months before the election, and thirteen years after her death, the Mormon Church posthumously baptized Barack Obama's mother into their church. This is a common practice. It's harmless and stupid, but it does highlight the fact that the church is a collection of ghouls. They're also chronic liars about it all.
Mormon Church spokeswoman Kim Farah said that "the offering of baptism to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter to Church policy for a Church member to submit names for baptism for persons to whom they are not related. The Church is looking into the…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2009New York Times columnist Charles Blow recently wrote this interesting column about the persistence of religion. Here is an apt summary:
While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2009As a follow-up to yesterday's post about Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton, go have a look at P. Z. Myers' lengthy review of Eagleton's book. It seems that Myers was trapped on a very bad plane ride with only Eagleton for reading material. So what did Myers think?
As I was marking up his little book with these questions, something routine happened: the plane hit some turbulence, bounced about for a bit, and I looked out the window and had the fleeting, morbid thought, "What if we crashed?" We've all had that thought, and I usually dismiss it with little concern, but this time I had a new…
pharyngula | May 5, 2009The other day, I read this fawning review by Andrew O'Hehir of Terry Eagleton's new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, and was a little surprised. I've read a smattering of Eagleton before, and the words "brisk, funny and challenging" or "witty" never came to mind, and the review actually gave no evidence that these adjectives were applicable in this case. I felt like ripping into O'Hehir, but was held up by one awkward lack: I hadn't read Eagleton's book. Who knows? Maybe he had found some grain of sense and some literary imperative to write cleanly and…
pharyngula | May 4, 2009They're dangerous and destructive, and erode the mission of our soldiers — and they also seem to be remarkably stupid. In the latest incident, people in Afghanistan are unhappy with the Christian evangelism that accompanies the US military. I can't blame them.
In one recorded sermon, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells soldiers that, as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him".
"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus.…
razib | May 4, 2009Late last year I reviewed a book by an American sociologist on Danish secularism. The book was titled Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, and apparently its publication resulted in some controversy in Denmark, in large part due to perceived misrepresentation of the Danish populace by the author. I suspected at the time that part of the issue was that of cultural miscommunication; what "secular" and "religious" are in the United States and Denmark vary a great deal, and the author was attempting to communicate primarily to an American audience…
gregladen | May 3, 2009The podcast for today's radio discussion with Fellman, Scott and Laden is available.
A bit about the history of the NCSE; cultural relativism in the science education movement; Greg disses bench scientists again; The appeasement question; A phone call from a famous Pharyngulistum; Science standards; Local control. The Minnesota Science Standards. An intelligently designed buffet and the question of "alternative curriculum."
Go listen, and come back and comment.
grrlscientist | May 3, 2009tags: Edward Current, kitty heaven, religion, satire, humor, streaming video
This amusing video is by Edward Current, and it provides evidence that his cat, Miss Delilah, has been saved and is going to Kitty Heaven. Which is a good thing, because otherwise her life on Earth would be meaningless! [1:56]
gregladen | May 3, 2009... In public schools. According to one Federal Judge in the US, not much.
A Mission Viejo high school history teacher violated the First Amendment by disparaging Christians during a classroom lecture, a federal judge ruled today.
James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, referred to Creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan.
The decision is the culmination of a 16-month legal battle between Corbett and Farnan - a conflict the judge said…
razib | April 30, 2009John Schwenkler points me to Rod Dreher's shock that religious people seem to support torture more than the non-religious:
And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!
What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.
John notes:
There are plenty of data showing that Christians' attitudes toward abortion, contraception, and the rest don't differ very significantly from those of the rest of society; the real factor, of course, lies in political affiliations, and I have little doubt that most of the relevant findings can be…
razib | April 30, 2009So claims Ali Eteraz:
Most people in the world, including some Pakistanis, live under the illusion that the country is secular and just happens to have been overrun by extremists. This is false. Pakistan became an Islamic state in 1973 when the new constitution made Islam the state religion. Under the earlier 1956 constitution Islam had been merely the "official" religion. Nineteen-seventy-three, in other words, represents Pakistan's "Iran moment"--when the government made itself beholden to religious law. Most western observers missed the radical change because the leader of Pakistan at the…
terrasig | April 30, 2009I only signed up for Twitter (@abelpharmboy) on 21 January but have found it incredibly valuable for staying up to speed on blogs, MSM articles, local and national news, and science and medicine stories. I've already accumulated 284 "followers" which is about half of our daily blog visitors. I'd say that about 60% of those are not spammers.
Well tonight in the Bull City, there is an event called Triangle Tweetup, a meetup of local Twitter users at Bronto Nation Software (@bronto). I'm going as are a few bloggers our readers may know such as Bora Zivkovic and foodie, jewelry-maker, and…
pharyngula | April 29, 2009Oh, no…it's an irresistible magnet. Francis Collins and Karl Giberson, with funding from the Templeton Foundation (who else?), have put together a whole website full of fluffy bunnies and pious weasels to reconcile science and faith. It's a rich vein of the worst of pseudo-scientific apologetics, and I am stunned by it — not because I am impressed by the substance, but because it is such a target-rich environment. Having read both Collins' Language of God, with it's amazing conversion experience that had to have impressed all with its depth and majesty, and the equally wooly-minded Karl…
pharyngula | April 29, 2009In a promising sign of the decline of some forms of Christianity, a major Christian book show has been cancelled.
The show won't go on in Dallas. The Christian Book Expo, an innovative consumer-focused book show, won't be repeated next year. The board of Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, show sponsor, decided not to stage another event in 2010. Attendance at this year's show, held March 20-22 at the Dallas Convention Center, was 1,500; organizers had hoped for 10,000 to 15,000. The show left the organization with a $250,000 shortfall, according to ECPA president and CEO Mark…
evolvingthoughts | April 28, 2009Wilkins is fragile and destablised
Intellectual tourist attacks local inhabitants
All happy bacteria are alike (or is that like each other?)
Australian current affairs gets vaccination right! [That's not a pun, it's an act of God] The original video is here.
Evolution does spreadsheets in origin of genetic code
Siris and Sandwalk go head to head on the Courtier's Reply. Neither of them are dressed.
Creationists misunderstand Deep Time. I'm shocked. I mean, it's only ten years since they were taken to task for it. Perhaps if they had millions of years to think it over...
oracknows | April 27, 2009I've complained quite a bit about the news media in my hometown. Indeed, about a year ago, I was stunned at how utterly credulous one TV reporter was about--of all things--orbs. I mean, orbs! Even dedicated ghosthunters don't push orbs much anymore, realizing that they are nothing more than reflections or specks of dust reflecting lights in photographs. Then there's Steve Wilson and his forays into anti-vaccine nonsense, in which he recycles some of the oldest, most tired, most highly debunked canards. Lately, it's been some additional crappy reporting about Gardasil and a recent "autism"…
pharyngula | April 26, 2009
Aren't you looking forward to seeing a tortured corpse adorning cars in your neighborhood?
That hideous plate is one of the options railroaded through the Florida legislature.
Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.
Siplin didn't mince words when asked what his "Trinity" plate looks like, saying, "It has a picture of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ." It, along with a "Preserving the Past" plate offered by…
grrlscientist | April 26, 2009tags: Edward Current, christianity, pray for armageddon, vibrations of devotion, satire, humor, streaming video
Edward Current is depressed: our once great country is now an Islamic communistic atheocracy where children are forced to learn things like math and science. This video is dated, but it still is worth watching. [3:40]
pharyngula | April 25, 2009This is an excellent talk by Andy Thomson on the biological and psychological origins of religion.
It's also precisely my position on the matter. There are many people who argue that religion provides a direct evolutionary advantage — I find them unconvincing. Thomson is explaining how religion's origin is indirect, as a byproduct of properties of the brain that we find useful in modeling our world and social interactions…and religion is a parasite that hijacks these traits to promote a caricature of these properties.
(via Richard Dawkins)