religion
grrlscientist | April 25, 2009tags: Edward Current, christianity, the intelligent dust bunny, the big bang, satire, humor, streaming video
Just in time for Saturday cleaning day: this video examines a dust bunny, a little ball of dust, it's miraculous what can be logically inferred about God and outer space. [4:06]
evolvingthoughts | April 25, 2009Suppose you have a religion and are interested in science. Do you
a. Have to give up your religion
b. Have to abandon your effort to find out about the natural world through science
c. Try to find some accommodation?
Now suppose you are a member of a scientific body, and want to suggest to members of religions that they can be part of the scientific enterprise. What do you do?
a. Tell them they can do so only if they abandon their religion
b. Tell them they cannot be part of the scientific enterprise
c. Tell them that some religions have no apparent problem accommodating science?
According to…
pharyngula | April 24, 2009Please, someone, tell the priests to go tend to their rituals and quit pretending to ha have any understanding of reality. A new archbishop has tried to use biology to argue for his archaic moral position, and I just want to slap him.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan yesterday said advocates of gay marriage "are asking for trouble," arguing that traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people's moral DNA.
"There's an in-built code of right and wrong that's embedded in the human DNA," Dolan told The Post in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview, a week after becoming the New York…
gregladen | April 23, 2009
... he went to a foreign country.
... he said "we are not a Christian Country."
... he had religious icons covered up on the stage where he gave a speech (which has been absolutely standard practice for years).
... what would President Abraham Lincoln Do?
.... all American Citizens should be required to pray.
Shouldn't there be a rule against using your floor time in Congress to pray?
Details here.
gregladen | April 23, 2009I just received a very threatening email from Dave Mabus. Dave is a christian who is rabidly anti atheist. As a person he is about as pleasant as a bad rash and as an intellect he makes a walnut look smart. Very few people send me truly threatening emails and get away with it for long. Remember the Turkish Spammers? I took care of them right good, didn't I. (Details will not be forthcoming ... just notice that they are not around here any more.) And I'd take care of Dave as well, except for one very important detail. He wasn't threatening me, he was threatening my friend and colleague…
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2009Here's Uncommon Descent's Barry Arrington holding forth on on the bleak conclusions he believes follow logically from atheism:
Make two assumptions:
(1) That atheistic naturalism is true.
(2) One can't infer an “ought” from an “is.” Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.
At this point you might enjoy the exercise of determining what follows about morality from those two premises. I am happy to grant them both. From the first we conclude that supernatural entities, most notably God, do not exist. From the second we conclude that an understanding of…
pharyngula | April 19, 2009Legislators in Louisiana are considering a bill to prohibit human-animal hybrids. We've been all over this subject before — it's ridiculous and founded on complete incomprehension of what the research is all about. How ridiculous is it? SB 115 bans the "mixing of human and animal cells in a petri dish"!
Guess who is pushing this ban? The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, a collection of professional ignoramuses, like this guy, Archbishop Alfred Hughes: old, white celibates with clerical collars and heads stuffed full of decaying dogma.
Look, Hughes, let's face up to reality. You aren…
razib | April 19, 2009The blog of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle has responded to my post that Buddhists generally believe in God. Some of the comments also brought up some semantic issues which are real in how Buddhists view God, and how it might be distinguished from more personalized conceptions of the divine being, especially in the Abrahamic religions. The short of it is that many Buddhists will accede that gods may exist, but that their role in the religion is relatively marginal. Additionally, Buddhists reject the Creator God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which is an important distinction.
First, though the…
grrlscientist | April 19, 2009tags: Christians, religion, death, humor, streaming video
A scientific study recently found that Christians are more likely to have aggressive medical care at the end of their lives -- why is that if heaven is so wonderful? In this video, Edward Current, the defender of Christianity everywhere, explains why Christians do not want to go to heaven early [3:17]
pharyngula | April 18, 2009That ridiculously serious National Organization for Marriage video — which was mocked mercilessly on Colbert — now has some competition. This is an anti-gay video put out by an Illinois church that claims Christians are being oppressed by the Homosexual Agenda right now.
So this is where the Religious Right has sunk to, deep in the land of WTF?
sciencepunk | April 17, 2009Has the head of the Catholic Church been meddling in your politics? Perhaps you'd like to be the one pulling his strings? Live out your God fantasies with your own Pope Benedict XVI puppet, courtesy of artist Rob Nance.
pharyngula | April 17, 2009I'm impressed. Usually, a blunt statement of religious belief can be remarkably offensive, but in this case a Harvard chaplain used weasel words to magnify the appalling nature of his remarks.
Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser '96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates.
In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was "great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some…
gregladen | April 17, 2009A young couple wished to get married (19 and 21 years of age)against their parent's wishes, so they tried to elope. They were tracked down by their parents, who had them arrested. Monday, they were shot to death by a firing squad.
The couple had violated the religious beliefs of their families.
Details here.
jrosenhouse | April 17, 2009The article by Julian Baggini disucssed in yesterday's blog post was a reply of sorts to this article by Madeleine Bunting. She starts with some encouraging words:
This is Holy Week. It started yesterday with Palm Sunday and continues through Holy Thursday, Good Friday and culminates this Sunday with Easter Day. One can no longer assume most people will be aware of this, let alone the events these days mark; in a recent UK poll, only 22% could identify what Easter was celebrating. What other system of belief has collapsed at such spectacular speed as British Christianity? One can only…
gregladen | April 17, 2009
Eight of Scotland's primary police department have listed their religion as Jedi.
Strathclyde Police said the officers and two of its civilian staff claimed to follow the faith, which features in the Star Wars movies.
The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review.
Strathclyde was the only force in the UK to admit it had Jedi officers.
Apparently there are close to four hundred thousand Jedi in England and Wales. Scotland has fourteen thousand.
details
gregladen | April 16, 2009The Episcopal Church has filed a lawsuit seeking to regain control of church property from the breakaway Diocese of Fort Worth.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Tarrant County district court. Defendants include Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, who led the theologically conservative diocese to split from the national church over issues including gay clergy and women in the priesthood.
Texans = Cry Babies
jrosenhouse | April 16, 2009Via P.Z. Myers I came across this article by Julian Baggini. Baggini is the editor of The Philosopher's Magazine and the author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction.
The essay is rather weird. It begins with the standard brain-dead boiler-plate about how Dawkins et al are just too darn mean in their attacks against religion:
When I threw off my Christianity, I did not throw out my Bible, I just learned to read it properly. Intelligent atheism rejects what is false in religion, but should retain an interest in what is true about it. I don't think many of my fellow atheists would disagree…
pharyngula | April 16, 2009Obama is going to rouse the ire of the religious right yet further: he wisely opted not to endorse Jesus while giving a speech on economics by having a Christian symbol on the lectern covered up while he spoke. Good move, I think — let's not get secular economic decision making all muddled up with Catholicism.
Amidst all of the American flags and presidential seals, there was something missing when President Barack Obama gave an economic speech at Georgetown University this week -- Jesus.
The White House asked Georgetown to cover a monogram symbolizing Jesus' name in Gaston Hall, which Obama…