religion
oracknows | August 30, 2008Jack Chick is old. After many years of turning out the most hilariously over-the-top Christian fundamentalist cartoons, you may think he's lost his edge, but if anything he seems to be getting even loonier. For example, check out his latest tract First Bite:
Click panel for the tract in all its crazy glory!
Yes, it actually has vampires in it! But, wait. Didn't Chick in the past do multiple tracts about how Halloween was the tool of Satan? On the other hand, this hilariously unhinged tract from 1991 features Satan as a serial killer, complete with chainsaw. On second thought, Satan as a…
pharyngula | August 30, 2008Integrity Bank in Georgia decided to build their business model on Christian principles.
Integrity's employees regularly prayed before meetings or in branch lobbies with customers, while the bank gave 10 percent of its net income to charities.
"We felt if we prayed and obeyed God's word and did what He asked, that He would help us be successful," the bank's founder, Steve Skow, told the Journal-Constitution in 2005.
Chalk this one up to another example of how religion fails and we really ought to base our decisions on reality: the bank failed. You really can't rely on that God fella, you…
oracknows | August 30, 2008Having grown up in an American league town east of the Mississippi, as a baseball fan it is my sacred duty to hate the Yankees. This is even more so given how badly my hometown team (the Detroit Tigers) and my second favorite team (the Cleveland Indians) are doing this year. Thanks to the Yankee organization itself and the NYPD, I now have yet another reason to hate the Yankees (as if I needed one), thanks to Stupid Evil Bastard. The Yankees actually ejected a man from Yankee Stadium for wanting to go to the bathroom during the seventh innning stretch (which, I always thought, was the purpose…
gregladen | August 29, 2008Webster Cook, the Florida student who was physically and politically attacked by forces directly and indirectly allied with the Catholic Church, was impeached and found guilty by the school government of his college. This is according to a source close to Webster, his friend, Benjamin Collard.
For more information on events leading up to this, see this guest blog by Benjamin of August 17th.
laelaps | August 28, 2008I'm not really a fan of the Templeton Foundation. In the past they've contributed quite a bit of money to the intelligent design crowd and folks who want to foster a teleological view of evolution, and the work resulting from the funded projects appears to be generally unimpressive. When John Templeton, the figure that started the foundation, died last month Nature ran an article about the foundation and what Templeton set out to achieve. Discussing Templeton's aims, the article reads;
He believed institutional religion to be antiquated, and hoped a dialogue with researchers might bring about…
laelaps | August 27, 2008
The famous fold-out plate that accompanied Pre-Adamite Man. Not the "dividing line" between ancient life and modern humans formed by the glaciers.
There is more to understanding the history of science than memorizing the dates when seminal books were published or knowing the names of the founders of particular disciplines. Science must be understood in context, and given the present public arguments about evolution it can be profitable to look back and see how science was being popularized circa 1859. While there were some books by scientists that were accessible to the public, many non-…
oracknows | August 27, 2008I've been sarcastically "thanking" Jenny McCarthy for bringing the U.S. the gift of measles through her tireless efforts on behalf of Generation Rescue and other antivaccine groups and will continue to do so whenever I deem it appropriate. But Jenny isn't the only one who deserves our "thanks" (no, I'm not going to thank Andrew Wakefield again). Let's not forget all those religions who, either because they think vaccines are messing with God's will or because of some interpretation of a holy book written in prescientific times, religions like this one in Canada:
With the number of confirmed…
oracknows | August 26, 2008Yesterday, I was annoyed by a particularly vile article by quackery promoter supreme Mike Adams claiming that Christina Applegate didn't need a bilateral mastectomy and could have "cured" herself of cancer with "natural" methods. Indeed, my contempt for Mike Adams knows no bounds, given that he is the purveyor of a seemingly never-ending stream of antiscience and quackery, much of it directed at cancer patients, who if they follow Adams' "advice" could very well miss their best chance at treating their cancer and thereby wind up dead. Indeed, so great is the amount of quackery emanating from…
razib | August 25, 2008A lot of comments have revolved around whether I am a Post-Modernist when it comes to the definition of religion. This post is to make explicit and clarify my own position so I don't have to waste so much time in the comments. Most readers can therefore ignore this and wait until I go back to posting on genetics or something more interesting! :-)
One model of religion goes like so:
Axiom (e.g., One must follow all 612 commandments) → Entails → Entails → Specific belief and practice
In other words, there is a contingent relationship between the initial set of beliefs, and the elaborated set of…
clock | August 25, 2008It is so nice teaching biology to adults when there are no (obvious) Creationists in the classroom. It does not always happen that way - I have had a couple of cases in the past - but this time it was really nice as I could freely cover all topics deeply within an evolutionary framework (not always seen in my public notes, though, as I try to gauge the class first and then decide how overtly to talk ebout everything in evolutionary terms). It is always a conundrum. If there is a potential resentment of my lectures, I have to thread carefully. I have to remember that I am not trying to…
gregladen | August 25, 2008David Campbell is a life science teacher in Florida who was recently profiled in the New York Times because of his involvement in the debate between Creationism and Evolution. This discussion is being picked up in the Blogosphere, and this is very timely, as this is the time when teachers in most US school districts are just heading back to class.
My "back to school" contribution is a repost of one of my more popular bits on the problem of the bible thumping student. This is revised and reposted from my old site. Enjoy:
.... Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own…
gregladen | August 25, 2008I am currently reading Charles Darwin (Blackwell Great Minds), and so far I mainly like it.
Ruse, as you may know, is a philosopher, something of a science historian, and a science writer who has criticized what he calls "strident" atheism for being too fundamentalist. So that is as annoying as hell. The volume at hand has a large chapter on this issue, and if you read it not knowing about this earlier debate, I think you would come away not being too annoyed, and might even enjoy it, if you consider yourself a .. ahem ... 'strident' atheist. It is annoying, however, that Ruse places "…
pharyngula | August 25, 2008An elementary school in Missouri has been allowing the Gideons to distribute bibles to students on their lunch hour. It's crazy stupid, a clear violation of the separation of church and state (not that fundie churches care about that anymore). Fortunately, Americans United is on the ball.
In its brief, AU asserts that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that school district promotion of religion puts pressure on nonbelievers or dissenters and is unconstitutional.
"In the cafeteria, students who choose to take Bibles and those who choose not to will be visible to much, if not all, of the student…
evolvingthoughts | August 24, 2008
In addition to Fuller's Science versus Religion, I also received my copy of Phil Dowe's Galileo, Darwin and Hawking last week, and today arrives Roy Davies' The Darwin Conspiracy (thanks, Roy; I will be as even handed as I can be), and Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God. So I am going to be busy over the next few weeks. I'll post a bloggy review here for those that I also have to review for a journal (I have a backlog on this - Bowler's Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons is also due).
I'm about one third through Schaeffer's book already - it's a good read. His father and mother come across as…
razib | August 23, 2008A rather pontifical commenter promoted me to do a little digging on the demographics of American atheists, as I was pretty sure that it would reinforce my point about the subjectivity of definitions. The product is a post at my other weblog, Large minority of atheists are religious:
...20% of atheists in the United States self-identify as a member of a religion. By atheist, I mean someone who states that they "Do not believe in God." 19% of Buddhists are atheists. 10% of Jews. 5% of Muslims and Hindus. 9% of "Other Faiths." And of course, 22% of the Unaffiliated (those without a…
razib | August 23, 2008Islam on Campus: A survey of UK student opinions. N = 632 for Muslims. Remember that this is an elite sample of the youth insofar as they're polling university students.
You might wonder what exactly Sharia law is in regarding to apostasy. Perhaps these students have a different interpretation than the majority consensus that apostates should be killed. Well....
In other words, 1 out of 33 Muslim British university students believe that apostates should be killed. Little wonder that many Europeans feel a little Islamophobia....
Additionally,
* Muslims have far less respect for atheists…
evolvingthoughts | August 22, 2008
In my Fun with Christians and worldviews piece, I made a passing comment:
Some views are just not amenable to a good life. I think Christianity is one, and not because I have some well-worked alternative I'd like to sell you, but because I can learn from the past and make inferences, and so can you.
Jim Goetz, who I find to be a balanced and sensible sort of Christian, asked in the comments for some backing to this apparently outrageous claim. It's a fair cop, so here is my argument...
As someone who does not believe in moral absolutes, and yet wants to ground moral claims in the real…
pharyngula | August 22, 2008I just received this email from some communications group trying to publicize the virtues of the Democratic Party. It had the opposite effect on me — I am appalled. It's the usual Democratic strategic inanity of pushing to ape the Republicans instead of even trying to be a party of progressive ideas, so they're going to promote futile religious bullshit at their convention. This just makes me furious.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION TO HIGHLIGHT DIVERSE COMMUNITY OF FAITH LEADERS WORKING TOWARD COMMON GOOD
First-Ever Faith Caucus Meetings to be Held at Democratic Convention
Invocators and Benedictors…