religion
gregladen | May 22, 2008Update on the Ono Law Suit ...
As you most certainly know, Yoko Ono and her two sons have sued the producers of Expelled! for their use without permission of the song Imagine by John Lennon.
Well, it appears as though a ruling from the court is imminent. AP is lubing the shoots with a retrospective summary of the suit.
Ono is not asking that the film be pulled, but rather, that the song she controls the rights to not be used.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan this week, the filmmakers' lawyer, Anthony T. Falzone, said that if the judge granted Ono's request for an…
pharyngula | May 19, 2008Robert Bakker is one of the good guys, a paleontologist who really does an excellent job of communicating enthusiasm for science. I saw him talk at St John's University a few years ago, and he clearly inspired the kids in attendance — I greatly enjoyed the talk too, even though one of his hooks was to incessantly emphasize the religious backgrounds of famous dinosaur hunters. It's a strategy, all right? If he can get more kids to follow through on science, more power to him.
However, he also illustrates another unfortunate phenomenon: religion turns even good scientists' brains to mush. In a…
pharyngula | May 19, 2008While I think a non-sectarian comparative religion course would be a fine idea for our public schools, I don't trust these bozos at all. Tennessee legislators want to stuff a bible studies class into the curriculum.
"Our government school teachers cannot constitutionally preach the Bible, but they can teach the Bible," Herron said.
"I want students to study the greatest and most popular book in history. I want young people to understand how the Bible has enormously impacted literature, art, music, culture, history and politics. A Bible course will help students understand our culture and our…
gregladen | May 19, 2008I was fifteen or so years old. That was back in the old days, before everyone who was 15 was world-wise and even world weary. I was a bit world wise for my age, though, as I was living on my own and was fully supporting myself with a couple of paying jobs.
Waling home from work one day, a pretty young woman approached me, as though she was asking for directions. She was foreign and her English was poor, but I eventually came to understand that she wanted me to come over to her house later that evening for dinner. She promised a nice dinner, and she promised more. She was using words like…
laelaps | May 19, 2008
Last month I posted an interview with paleontologist Bob Bakker, and while the scientific questions I asked stirred some discussion (including a response to some of the points from Jack Horner) a number of readers got hung up on the last part of the interview dealing with science & religion. Many of the comments on the original post disagreed with Bakker's criticism of Richard Dawkins, while creationists elsewhere on the web quote-mined the interview to support of their own views (see here and here, for example).
Just this past weekend Bakker sent me a reply to the comments that centered…
laelaps | May 15, 2008
As regular readers of this blog know, I have an extreme affinity for museums and always welcome the news of a long-lost specimen that was locked away in storage turning out to be something new and significant. In 2006 one such discovery occurred when Mike Taylor (seen left, holding the specimen) came across a sauropod vertebra named BMNH R2095, a fossil that would turn out to be something so entirely different that one year later it was assigned the name Xenoposeidon. Mike Taylor has done much more than bring Xenoposeidon to light, however, and I caught up with him to ask a few questions…
gregladen | May 14, 2008 Emperor Han Aidi Keep an eye on the hanging tree. There will be a fresh astronomer hanging there soon. Mark my words.
This story is sometimes told:
During the reign of a particular emperor in China, the role of the historian was becoming more significant. An historian sat in the Emperors throne room and recorded events, as faithfully as possible, and the Emperor paid close attention to this process.
One day, the Emperor sentenced a man to be beheaded, and the man was executed immediately. However, it was not entirely clear that this was an act of justice or an act of anger. The…
pharyngula | May 14, 2008A major court decision in Vermont slammed the Catholic church there.
A Burlington jury issued a landmark verdict against the state's Roman Catholic diocese Tuesday, ordering it to pay $8.7 million in damages to a former Burlington altar boy fondled multiple times by a priest the church knew was a child molester.
It's a harsh penalty, but warranted by the way the church turned a blind eye to outrageously criminal behavior. I'd like to say that they'll learn a lesson from it, but the comments from Catholic officials suggest that no, they won't.
A grim Bishop Salvatore Matano, who attended the…
gregladen | May 14, 2008You must watch this to the end.
"Just because you were born here, doesn't make you an American...."
(The good news is that the racist haters are even more hateful than the hateful racists. As needed.)
Hey, don't forget to Hit This Poll!
[Hat Tip: Boris Milicevic]
jrosenhouse | May 13, 2008Ed Brayton has an interesting post on one of my favorite subjects. It is based on remarks made by two of Ed's commenters. Let's have a look.
Commenter Sastra begins with the following:
I suspect that ID advocates haven't bothered to condemn Stein's statement because they have all intuitively translated it into what Stein actually meant. They translate everything into their own idiom, because they are fighting a different war. It's not about the science.
“Science leads to killing people” doesn't really mean what it appears to say. Instead, it means:
“If you base your world view only on…
pharyngula | May 13, 2008Just what we need — another evangelical Christian theme park, this one in the planning stages in Tennessee. This one has one particular instance of blinkered blindness, though, that I thought was rather funny.
The Park is planned as an "edutainment" experience, combining education and entertainment. The Park is without a particular religious ideology or theology and does not promote specific religious beliefs of any kind; instead, it is designed to bring to life history of Biblical times and stories from the Holy Bible.
If you read the rest, you'll learn that this thing is taking…
terrasig | May 13, 2008I'm not sure whether this story qualifies as alternative medicine or religion, or neither. I throw it out to you because I and other sci/med bloggers widely criticize the infiltration of so-called alternative medicine in our academic medical centers.
But here in today's Health Journal section of the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck tells us of the application of mindfulness, a practice derived from Buddhism, to overcoming binge-eating disorders. Sure, this may be considered alternative medicine but it's really an application of psychology under the auspices of integrative medicine:
In a…
pharyngula | May 12, 2008I have a daughter myself, who I want to grow up to be independent and free and sensible and interesting, so I can't even imagine what it would take to bring a parent to this:
For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.
Yikes. What did she do? Become a mass murderer, a terrorist, a destroyer of entire cultures by acts of destruction?
No, nothing quite so horrific. She was guilty of puppy love.
Two weeks…
razib | May 11, 2008I have a new sublog over at Talk Islam. My first post, A wrong track for Western Islam?:
Thabet mentioned the spread of Salafism among British Muslims. Of course most of you know that North Indian Islam has an indigenous form 'reformist' Islam, Deobandism, which is not in intents all that different from Salafism. But the majority of North Indians are 'traditionalist' Barelvis, a variant of Hanafism. Despite these historical precedents there is a tendency among non-Arab Western Muslims to 'Arabicize' their Islam, or at least reform it so as to expunge local accretions & interpretations (…
gregladen | May 11, 2008 Manson It is amazing to consider that Charles Manson's crimes (stemming from religious cultism) are still under investigation. Apparently, there will be some digging at a ranch occupied by "The Manson Family" because there is suspicion that there are more bodies to be found.
...police are to carry out excavation work at a Californian ranch to search for more possible victims of notorious mass murderer Charles Manson.
They believe more bodies may be buried at the ranch in the Death Valley national park where Manson and his followers hid after the killings.
Manson was convicted in 1969 of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 11, 2008Tristero correctly points out those churches that are concerned that they will lose their tax exempt status have a solution to their problems:
...this is a lie because the reverend knows very well that the IRS is not banning him from endorsing a candidate. He is quite free to do so. Likewise, his church is also free to endorse whoever they want to.
All they need to do - and it's no big deal, really, unless the reverend and his church worship filthy mammon above all - is to forgo tax-exempt status...
Where I kind of disagree with Tristero is with this:
Maybe, but it is an indication of how…
pharyngula | May 11, 2008Paul Jones has died. I didn't know him, or even know about him, until his obituary was sent to me, but it's an utterly tragic life story. He was an ordained Baptist minister — there's a waste of a life right there — and his death was ironic and futile.
He died of a heart attack, just as he was about to pray with a member of his Upper Room Fellowship. His last word was "Jesus".
Someday I'm going to die, too, and I hope it is while doing something productive, and that I don't go out with the name of an imaginary being on my lips. And in particular, it would be nice if my obituary would say…
gregladen | May 10, 2008Richard Dawkins does pretty good in the debate or discussion format. But here we have an example of Dawkins' skill combined with a bit of luck, the hubris of the interviewer, and other particularistic circumstances converging on a moment. A moment you absolutely have to hear to believe.
There are three items at this link, but the first one is the one to which I refer:
Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor
Hat tip: Pharyngula.
pharyngula | May 10, 2008Richard Dawkins takes only 3 minutes to slam both and Cardinal Murphy O'Connor and his interviewer, John Humphrys for the false privilege given to religion. Listen and enjoy.
gregladen | May 10, 2008Despite apparent support from city officials and the local press, a very large majority polled clearly say that they prefer that Frankenmuth Michigan NOT boast a Christian Cross on its official city seal.
See the poll here. More details here.