religion
pharyngula | September 15, 2008The Pope has berated selfish secularists:
Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague Saturday as he led more than a quarter of a million Catholics in an outdoor Mass in Paris.
But…this is from the Mr Fancy Pants in silk clothes with gold stitching who lives here:
The pope has already hit the max in flashy clothes and overly elaborate residences, so the only way to increase the glitz is to pose against a backdrop of dreary people in dun clothes living in shacks, I guess. More poverty, please! We need to make the papacy look…
gregladen | September 15, 2008For the last three or four decades, a delusional cult has spread within the United States, the leaders of which have every intention of taking over the country, in fact, the world. Sounds funny, but it really is not. If you don't think this is true, you are naive, and if you have not seen this happening you are not really looking.
Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.
If John McCain is elected president, it will be because of the strength of this cult, in combination with the power of racism manifest as the so-called "bubba vote" whereby a large…
evolvingthoughts | September 14, 2008
The hyperborean John Pieret, notes that my love for the "social glue" theory of religion (I henceforth steal that name, John; sue me. Oh, wait, you're a lawyer aren't you? Never mind) has been backed up by two ASU anthropologists in a new book. I'd feel a lot happier if my views weren't being supported by Craig T. Palmer, who previously coauthored a book on rape in the natural world with Randy Thornhill. However, I'll take whatever support I can get.
Meanwhile the Church of England is apologising for getting stuck into Charles Darwin for the theory of evolution. In my mind the Thomists and…
oracknows | September 12, 2008I've often written about the intersection of medicine and religion. Most commonly, I've lamented how the faithful advocate inappropriately injecting religion into the doctor-patient relationship in a manner that risks imposing the religion of the health care practitioner on the patient, sometimes through physicians feeling no obligation to inform patients of therapeutic options that violate their religious beliefs or pharmacists refusing to dispense medications that (they claim) violate their beliefs. Another common thread running through this blog is criticism of religion when it leads…
gregladen | September 11, 2008The Minnesota Science Standards are currently in the process of review and updating. This is what the governor of Minnesota thinks. He's wrong about the "local" thing. He is such a ball-less ass. Oh, I so wish he was in Palin's position. Maybe.
If you are in Minnesota and want to provide your feedback on the standards, and you are not Tim Pawlenty, please click here. If you ARE Tim Pawlenty, bite me.
gregladen | September 10, 2008Well, not the actual Scientology, but rather, the Anti-Scientology videos that had been pulled.
According to The Standard,
YouTube may be rethinking their process for handling DMCA takedown notices this week, after receiving thousands of bogus notices alleging illegal content on the site. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), over a period of 12 hours, from Thursday night to Friday morning, YouTube received over 4000 notices, all for content critical of the Church of Scientology.
The notices were sent from an organization by the name of American Rights Counsel, LLC.…
pharyngula | September 9, 2008After a pleasant period of my mailbox cooling down a bit, I've recently seen a significant surge of howling mad Catholics shrieking at me. I was wondering what prompted the resurgence, and here it is: apparently I made the cover of the Catholic League's newsletter, The Catalyst, and am even the subject of a frothing mad editorial by Billy Donohue, a complete timeline of the Great Desecration, and various requests for the faithful to howl for my job.
It's kind of cool, in a perverse way. Cry, babies, cry.
pharyngula | September 8, 2008That's a quote from Lou Engle in this video — and it's actually kind of true. He thinks it will be a wonderful thing when people see this, and there probably are a lot of Americans who think the events portrayed are perfectly ordinary, and even commendable.
I see nothing but madness.
By picking Sarah Palin for a running mate, John McCain has turned over a rock to expose a festering, primitive insanity in our country. Look on the squirming horror, world, and learn that it does exist!
A further indictment: Juan Cole sees Palin through the lens of his expertise on the Islamic world.
John…
clock | September 7, 2008Little Light explains the strange tale about the school desk from Huckabee's speech. As we should have known by now - it is a dogwhistle:
Sound familiar yet? Please tell me it does. This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ. Don't buy the connection of this story as an allegory for the doctrine of Grace Alone? Here's a few ways to put it. And the guy…
clock | September 6, 2008owlz:
Stated or not, the extreme right, the real audience intended to be won over by the Palin choice, will be eagerly anticipating her becoming president at the earliest possible date. They will be looking for her to have influence even while McCain is in office. The cynicism of choosing someone at odds with his one-time positions on major issues for the purpose of getting in the Oval Office could be among the most irresponsible actions ever taken by the presidential candidate of a major party.
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McCain's choice was to give a person from the quite far-right the greatest boost…
laelaps | September 5, 2008Last week I wrote about Cobb & Coyne's assertion that "the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism," which appeared in the correspondence section of Nature. This week there is yet another letter on the science v. religion debate, this time by Jonathan Cowie. and it unfortunately manages to conflate "faith" and "science." Cowie writes;
Scientists' use of the scientific method pragmatically includes faith. A scientist must first conceive the idea for an experiment, and then -- on the basis merely of the hopeful presumption of its possible outcome --…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2008If you thought Obama's minister was a piece of work, get a load of Palin's church (italics mine):
An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin's church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.
Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church's website.
"He's a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,"…
razib | September 3, 2008Well, today something popped into my RSS which is likely to make many neoatheists somewhat excited; Participating In Religion May Make Adolescents From Certain Races More Depressed:
But new research has found that this does not hold true for all adolescents, particularly for minorities and some females. The study found that white and African-American adolescents generally had fewer symptoms of depressive at high levels of religious participation. But for some Latino and Asian-American adolescents, attending church more often was actually affecting their mood in a negative way.
Asian-American…
pharyngula | September 3, 2008Texas now has a law that requires all public schools to offer an elective course in the Christian bible, thanks to a bill authored by Warren Chisum, who will for all eternity be remembered as the "Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa," a phrase by Molly Ivins. This is a tricky one; I'm not opposed to teaching the bible as an example of literature, since it is, and is a rather widely used source in addition, but there's more here than a Texas hick acquiring a sudden and previously unexhibited appreciation for literature. He may have to be remembered for something else — a palpable knack for…
gregladen | September 3, 2008Webster Cook is the young man attending a Florida University who was assaulted by Catholic Host Watchers because he did not chew the sacred cracker fast enough in church several weeks ago. This led to the incident that became internationally known as Crackergate. The internet itself became the venue for a major kerfuffle involving PZ Myers and The Catholic Church, but in the mean time, back in Florida, Webster Cook was charged, as a student in the University's own Kangaroo court, with various crimes, but acquitted a few weeks ago. More recently, he (as a member of student government) was…
pharyngula | September 3, 2008This is a terrifying video. It's Sarah Palin going on and on in front of her Assembly of God church, talking about the war in Iraq as "a task that is from God", promising the congregants the gift of prophecy, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…it ought to make any rational human being ill.
But that's not the scary part. The truly frightening prospect, and the thing that we must not forget lest we underestimate Palin, is that huge numbers of people in this country will find that blithering speech uplifting and wonderful. We atheists view it with alarmed horror, that an idiot like that could be considered…
pharyngula | September 2, 2008Unfortunately, it's at a student's expense. While the University of Central Florida administration cleared him of all wrong-doing, the student-run senate impeached Webster Cook and removed him from office. Donohue may gloat a little bit, but isn't it rather cheesy that he should shriek to mobilize national outrage and this is the worst he can do?
jrosenhouse | September 2, 2008In a number of recent posts I have remarked that when it comes to Biblical analysis, I think the young-Earthers have more going for them than is sometimes acknowledged. I have also commented that I have been generally unimpressed with the more highbrow sorts of Biblical exegesis I have seen with regard to the text of Genesis. Let me give you an example.
I just finished reading a book called Is God A Creationist?, an edited anthology of essays published in the eighties defending various sophisticated approaches to Genesis. One of the contributors was Owen Gingerich, a professor of Astronomy…
pharyngula | September 2, 2008Why? Because that is the day of the Pulpit Initiative, when brave and idiotic right wing preachers will defy the IRS and lose their tax exemptions.
The Pulpit Initiative
Reclaiming pastors' constitutional right to speak Truth from the pulpit
On Sunday, September 28, 2008, we are seeking pastors who will preach from the pulpit a sermon that addresses the candidates for government office in light of the truth of Scripture. The sermon is intended to challenge the Internal Revenue Code's restrictions by specifically opposing candidates for office that do not align themselves and their positions…
pharyngula | August 31, 2008Whenever you hear someone defend an action with the excuse that “it is our custom,” “it is traditional,” “we've always done it that way,” “it is written so in our sacred texts,” or variants thereof, slap ’em down and spit in their eye. Those are not excuses for anything but the perpetuation of bad old dogma rather than taking the useful step of actually thinking about causes and consequences — it's the common fallacious shortcut that allows ancient evils to thrive. Case in point in Pakistan:
Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the…