religion
oracknows | July 1, 2008(Note Addendum before commenting, please.)
Is there any candidate who still supports the separation of church and state anymore? Heck, even Barack Obama seems to be pandering to the religious base these days:
CHICAGO -- Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy -- support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in…
mikethemadbiologist | July 1, 2008Who woulda thunk it? It's already well-established that the good souls of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives had a 'No Jews need apply' policy*. Now it turns out that, like so many bigots, they're also corrupt (italics mine):
A former top official in the White House's faith-based office was awarded a lucrative Department of Justice grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees, according to current and former DOJ staff members and a review of internal DOJ documents and emails.
The $1.2 million grant was jointly awarded to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino…
pharyngula | June 30, 2008I must have a lot of Australian readers, or the few of you are really upset about this, because I'm getting a rising volume of email about World Youth Day. This is a bizarre Catholic get-together for young people — bizarre because, well, the idea of a pack of Catholic priests herding a flock of young boys and girls into one central mass sounds like the preliminaries to a feeding frenzy to me — which is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a substantial chunk of which is being subsidized by Australian taxpayers. Isn't it a bit peculiar that a secular government is paying for a…
jrosenhouse | June 30, 2008I've just got back from a road trip to Marrowbone, KY (!!). Mostly I was there for a friend's wedding. Here's the church where the wedding took place. Pretty, but truly in the middle of nowhere. And, yes, I did find time to pay another visit to the Creation Museum, even though it is in an entirely different part of the state. How could I not? They've opened the Dinosaur Den and the Petting Zoo since the last time I was there!
The largest towns near Marrowbone are Burkesville and Tompkinsville, which have a few thousand people between them. My motel room had the Burkesville/…
pharyngula | June 29, 2008Well now, isn't this special: if you're a religious leader on official business, you can get free parking permits in North London.
Mike Freer, leader of the council, said: "The importance of religion to many Barnet residents cannot be underestimated and the council has acknowledged this with a policy that will assist spiritual leaders when engaging with people in times of illness or crisis."
It may be important to some people, but since it doesn't actually do anything for them, this logic seems backward to me — clergy should be paying extra for the privilege of peddling superstition, as a…
pharyngula | June 28, 2008Well now…if you've had a hankerin' to torture, abuse, and do who knows what else to people at your whim, here's what you do: move on down to Texas and set up a religion. The Texas Supreme Court just ruled on a case in which a young woman was subjected to extreme distress and restraint during a church-run exorcism (isn't that insane enough right there? An exorcism in 21st century America?), and they threw the previous judgment against the church out. Why? Because holding a church liable for psychological damage "would have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect' by compelling the church to…
evolvingthoughts | June 27, 2008
Readers may know I have a passing interest in the works of Terry Pratchett. Oh, okay then, I'm a fanboy. Have been for well over fifteen years, since a coworker shoved Good Omens into my hands and mind. So it was with some trepidation that I read that he had found God.
Actually, though, he hasn't:
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day…
evolvingthoughts | June 25, 2008
On the one hand we have James Dobson declaring that Barack Obama isn't really Christian, because he distorts the Bible. Funny, I thought the Bible had some things to say about that [Matt 5:22, 7:1, Luke 6:37, Rom 2:1, 14:4, James 4:11, but then I'm not a Christian so I am probably misreading it by taking it literally here]. It is clearly un-Christian to make arguments for the arrangement of a secular society in a secular manner. How dare Obama make that argument in a secular society. But we know that the Christian right doesn't actually want a secular society.
On the other hand we have a…
pharyngula | June 25, 2008Uh-oh. The president of Minnesota Atheists, August Berkshire, is descending into the den of idiocy that is our local evangelical radio station, KKMS. Listen if you can bear it. Personally, I don't know that I can — it's too repellent to listen to people who stress the importance of mindless faith, yet have only bad faith to offer.
If you missed it, here's an MP3 of August's segment.
jrosenhouse | June 24, 2008Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens provides some much needed pushback against the deluge of Tim Russert hagiography:
Last on the list of miracles (and do please beware anything that comes in threes) was the apparition of a huge and beautiful rainbow arcing over the Potomac as the mourners came up to the Kennedy Center rooftop for a reception. In the words of NBC News executive Phil Griffin, “After the magical experience of this service, to come out and see the rainbow and Luke at the bottom of it made the last dry eye weep.” It was further pointed out that the last song at the memorial…
razib | June 23, 2008Last month my posts Biblical literalism or low IQ: which came first? and Educational levels & denomination got a lot of play around the blogosphere. I used the US Religious Landscape Survey to get demographic data for denominations, but I had to cobble together numbers on Biblical literalism, etc. But with a further release of data I can now flesh out almost all the denominations plotting postgrad education % vs. belief that the Bible is the literal word of god.
Clarification: Y axis = % with postgrad education. X axis = % who believe the Bible is the literal word of god.
As you can…
razib | June 23, 2008One of the points that I run into all the time is that Buddhism is a religion without god, that is it is an atheistic religion. I admit this assertion as an ideal or elite belief, but contend that the vast majority of the world's Buddhists are theists, so one can't simply present Buddhism as an atheistic religion when most Buddhists are not atheists. I do tend to agree that Western converts to Buddhism are often atheists, and that's one reason Westerners view it as atheistic religion since the Buddhists they are most likely to know are not ethnically Asian ones. The US Religious Landscape…
pontiff | June 23, 2008Pascal's Wager is a classic for those who want to argue about the existence of God, but now, according to Peter L. Bernstein, of the New York Times, we should be using it for financial risk calculations. Say what?
Bernstien starts out fine:
For example, the average annual inflation rate in the United States was only 1.4 percent from the end of 1954 to the end of 1965. But in 1965, who could have imagined that inflation would average nearly five times that rate over the next 15 years?
In short, our forecasts are wrong from time to time.
I might quibble a bit with the "time to time", BTW...…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: Religion is Bullshit, George Carlin, humor, comedy, streaming video
As usual these days, I was awake until the sun came up. So in the wee hours of the morning, I learned that one of my favorite people, George Carlin, died. I've always loved George Carlin even though I've never had the privilege to see him perform live. I especially enjoyed George's comments about religion, but he is so brilliant that I "especially enjoy" many things that he had to say. I know that he lived a long and wonderful life, with little mental or physical deterioration to rob him of his dignity and integrity,…
gregladen | June 23, 2008Or older. In fact, my hero is dead.
For me, George Carlin was inspirational, influential, even formative, on a personal level. For society, Carlin was extraordinarily important. He should have gotten a Nobel for making people think even when they did not want to. He was about to be awarded the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Even the news media is calling him a "hero" of the counter culture. Since the new media is staffed by the remnants of the counter culture, dired out, that is saying something (subtly).
He apparently died of heart failure. He was 71.
From one writeup…
gregladen | June 22, 2008It has been said that home schooling is a bit suspicious because it is possible for people to keep their kids home to abuse them. This is probably very very rare, but yes, it is possible and there are examples of it. however, home schoolers often (at least the most vocal amongst them) insist this is impossible and that it is merely a ploy to ... ah, do to something, I'm not quite sure what.
As these arguments waft and weft across the intertubes, there is a very common kind of pseudo-logic that we hear. This is what is looks like:
"Home schooling is not bad because public schools are bad…
razib | June 22, 2008I happen to personally accept both of these assertions:
1) A scientific world-view entails atheism
2) A scientific world-view contradictions Creationism
That being said, as matters of debate & discussion I think the former is an open question, while the latter is not an open question. When it comes to Creationism from where I stand there's nothing to talk about; the facts of the universe manifestly falsify Creationism. Creationism is a rather clear & distinct idea. I know what I'm rejecting, and I know what the Creationists believe. Aside from the Amish and a few other groups the…
gregladen | June 22, 2008Obviously, Uri Geller is a fraud. Always has been. He had tricks he uses to make people think he's bending a spoon using super natural powers, or moving compass needles, etc. Mainly, he uses cheap tricks to fool gullible ready-to-be-fooled people.
Don't be a ready-to-be-fooled person!
Here's are three videos that are currently popular on YouTube regarding this. The first shows a typical Geller show:
Here's James Randi talking about Uri Geller:
Lately, there's been an obnoxous email being sent around to everyone by a person who as far as I can tell does not exist with the name of David…
gregladen | June 20, 2008This is unbelievable. I go away for a few hours to attend a conference and this kind of crap happens:
The school board of a small central Ohio community voted Friday to fire a teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs despite staff complaints and burning the image of a cross on students' arms, according to the Associated Press.
....
Freshwater also displayed the Ten Commandments in his classroom and taught creationism, according to an independent investigation launched after the parents of the student who was allegedly branded filed a lawsuit.
The suit alleges that he regularly…
pharyngula | June 20, 2008I'm in Vegas, I'm at the Amaz!ng Meeting, I'm distracted by all the shiny flashy lights and all the strange people who want to talk to me, so you're all going to have to talk among yourselves for a while. Here are a few news items to prime the pump.
Don't read this one until after breakfast. It's the sad case of Ondrej Mauerova, a young boy kept imprisoned and tortured by a weird Czech cult. I don't even want to say any more about it.
In a less malevolent but even more catastrophic cult failure, Neil Beagley, a 16 year old Oregon boy, has died because his family only believes in "faith…