religion
pharyngula | July 24, 2008How sad. I no longer have the lead headline at Spirit Daily: I've been bumped by WORRIES ON POTTER BEAR OUT IN AN EXPLOSION OF TEEN WITCHCRAFT. How fickle these Catholics are, and how easily they are frightened by imaginary concerns.
(By the way, Spirit Daily is one of the best places to go if you want to see spiritual wackaloonery — they glean the web for the craziest stuff.)
grrlscientist | July 24, 2008tags: dinosaurs, Tardosaurus, paleontology, fossils, Noah's Ark, religion, godlessness
Image: Orphaned (please send the original artist's information to me so I can properly attribute and link back to this person)
Inspired by the recent unveiling of the Tarbosaurus in Japan, I had to include this dinosaur for the creationists, the newly unveiled Tardosaurus, which single handedly (?) destroyed Noah and his ark full of animals.
gregladen | July 24, 2008This blog will now engage in twenty four hours of silence as a show of respect for the all those who have suffered at the hands religious zealots around the world and throughout history.
I say this out of inspiration from a post written on Pharyngula by biologist PZ Myers. PZ makes the link between medieval anti-Semitic church law and the original idea that the Eucharist is holy. You must read his post, the best written and most meaningful thing on the internet this day. Here.
Here is a photograph of the staged 'desecration' worked out by PZ, in which we see the Eucharist, pages form the…
pharyngula | July 24, 2008It is finished.
I wonder how many of our Catholic friends have heard of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215? This is the event where many of their important dogmas were codified, including the ideas of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, that the Eucharist was the sacrament that only properly ordained priests of the Catholic church could give, and that the Jews were a pariah people, who could hold no public office, had to pay a special Jew tax for their right to exist, and were required to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians. The yellow badge marking the Juden was not an…
evolvingthoughts | July 22, 2008
Once upon a time, a Roman author named Quintus Ennius wrote: "how like us is that very ugly beast, the ape!" It was quoted by Cicero, and from him Bacon, Montaigne and various others. But always it was thought that apes (simia, literally "the similar ones"), which in that time include monkeys and what we now call apes indifferently, were distinct from humans in every meaningful way. As Cicero said after citing Ennius, the character is different.
But then along came a Swedish botanist turned generalist, Carolus Linnaeus, in the 18th century, and despite being a creationist, he put apes,…
razib | July 22, 2008Half Sigma points me to The Legend of a Heretic, which chronicles the close relationship between Robert G. Ingersoll, a prominent American agnostic of the 19th century, and the Republican Party elite of that time. It seems ironic that though we are a nation which explicitly bans formal religious tests, we live at a time where an implicit religious test exists. This despite the fact that Andrew Jackson was probably the first of our presidents who would be considered an orthodox Christian. But even as late as 1908 a Unitarian, William Howard Taft, was president (despite some grumblings…
jrosenhouse | July 22, 2008James Carse directed the Religious Studies Program at New York University for thirty years. In this interview with Salon, regarding his new book The Religious Case Against Belief, he gives us a taste of what he learned from all that study:
And yet, you've just told me that you yourself don't believe in a divine reality. In some ways, your critique of belief systems seems to go along with what the new atheists are saying.
The difference, though, is that I wouldn't call myself an atheist. To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the…
mikethemadbiologist | July 21, 2008I've noted before that the background to the 'culture wars' is that white, male, Christian (often Protestant) is no longer the cultural default setting. Regarding religion:
The greatest con theopolitical conservatives ever pulled was getting their religious views defined as the cultural 'default setting' when, in fact, most people aren't fundamentalist Christians. And the way they did that was by lying.
By way of skippy and Pacific Views, I came across this interesting observation by Christine Wicker (italics mine):
The 25 percent of Americans who say they are evangelicals don't go to church…
clock | July 19, 2008Silly, but funny to see how people react when treated to a dose of their own medicine:
"Australian filmmaker John Safran is so fed up with mormons ringing his doorbell early in the morning that he flies to Salt Lake City Utah and tries to convert Mormons to atheism. Needless to say, the locals were not pleased."
[Hat-tip: Tanja]
pharyngula | July 18, 2008…and a knife-fight did not break out. Heads were spinning on necks and there was some pea-soup vomiting, but since it's on radio you don't get to see that. Anyway, you can listen to the interview on Catholic Radio International, or you can download the mp3 directly.
grrlscientist | July 17, 2008tags: explicit atheism, godlessness, religion, theism, rational living, freethinking, philosophy
Phylogeny of Christianity.
Image: FrostFireZoo.
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
~ Baron d'Holbach, 1772.
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) was recently added to the Atheist Blogroll. You can see the atheist doohickey on my left sidebar, which looks like this;
The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to atheist bloggers from around the world. As a new member, I was invited to write a little blurb (blurp?) about…
tqa | July 16, 2008
Apparently, Chad's dog has at least some of the issues surrounding the PZ Myers/Eucharist desecration issue figured out. I'm not sure, but I think she understands them much better than some of the folks who have been commenting here. And she expresses things with so much more grace and panache than I usually manage.
gregladen | July 16, 2008Charles Kroll is the presumed husband of "Melanie," the person who's work email account was used to send PZ Myers a very nasty death threat. This is the death threat:
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in.
The threat was issued via an email account from a florist that you've likely used if you've sent flowers more than a few times.
Well, a person I assume to be Mr. Melanie sent me an email this morning.
In it he takes responsibility for having written the email and explains that it is a shame…
pharyngula | July 14, 2008So that's what I am now? The Minnesota Independent has an interview. It probably won't soothe the inflamed mob.
gregladen | July 14, 2008... And so far, to my knowledge, there has been no commentary by the Catholic League condemning these threats.
For example:
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in....I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt
That one was from mkroll writing from 1800 Flowers.com
And this one from a somewhat more anonymous person:
You are a scumbag, may your insides rot, may your neck be snapped by an iron boot against a curb
Since the Catholic League has a hair trigger when it comes to…
tqa | July 12, 2008
I really had no plans on posting more about the whole PZ and the eucharist thing. I got my own views off my chest last night, and there haven't been any new developments in the case itself. The initial reactions to Paul's post are in, and the commenters have sorted themselves into three groups ("Rock on!", "Dude. Not cool.", and "Where's the firewood?"). It's unlikely that there's going to be a lot of movement from one group to another. Under the circumstances, writing another post on this issue has all the appeal of sticking my finger in a pencil sharpener.
But then there was the side…
jrosenhouse | July 12, 2008Andrew Sullivan was not amused by P. Z.'s post:
It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a “goddamned cracker” isn't about free speech; it's really about some baseline civility. Myers' rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.
But wait a minute! Wasn't Sullivan leading the charge in defense of the Danish newspapers that published caricatures of the prophet Muhammed? Yes, I believe…
gregladen | July 12, 2008"At a contentious public meeting in Mount Vernon, Ohio, the district school board scheduled a hearing on whether to fire teacher John Freshwater. Freshwater has been accused of teaching intelligent design in his biology classes, and of using a piece of lab equipment to brand a cross on a student's arm."
.... from an NCSE press release. More:
The Columbus Dispatch reports (July 7, 2008) "The Mount Vernon eighth-grade science teacher who has been under scrutiny for focusing on creationism and intelligent design in his classes will contest his planned firing at an Aug. 26 hearing. The date…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2008tags: atheism, crackergate, religion, religious zealotry, fundamentalism, freedom of speech, eucharist hosts, transubstantiation, cultural observation
Not so very long ago, Americans mocked muslim nations for rioting and issuing death threats over the publication of a few cartoons in Danish newspapers. A little over one month ago, Americans once again sat back in a cloud of smug judgmentalism as they laughed at the uproar caused by a teddy bear that was named "Mohammad" by a classroom full of kids. American christians aren't so backward and superstitious as all those muslims, the religious…