Churches most segregated places in the US: Fox News Minister Say's that's great.

What a surprise, the priest is a Moran.

"God is a lot more than just one thing."

True. He is as big as your imagination.

The story is basically a non-issue. But Father Morris' views about his god are revealing. Quoting: " ... God is love, and sometimes love means, also punishing ... "

So, God loves us, and that's the reason he sends some of us to Hell for an eternity of torture. Mind you, he says all this with a straight face, and the news commentators don't call him on this because ... well, why? Does it mean they also subscribe to this idiocy? Are they afraid to criticize somebody who wears a priestly collar? Are they worried about ratings?

Suppose the news anchor had been PZ or Richard or Ophelia, or Christopher? They'd have handed him his head. This short video, IMHO, is a poster child for the proposition that "Don't be a dick." is a losing strategy. Somebody ought to tell this raving lunatic that God's love and Hell are mutually contradictory.

he is a moran alright. why does he think only scientists are in a science classroom? i'm the only scientist in my classroom. everyone else is a student.

also, that survey was 1648 participants at baylor university. no bias in that poll, eh?

plus, if you total the survey answers, they total to 95%.

wonder what the other 5% were?

I assume the remaining 5% are atheists. But the "Distant God" answerers, those would be Deists -- I think we can count them as on our side for many purposes.

Five percent sounds like a low estimate for atheists.

As a recovering RC, I can assure you that his vacuous blather was not atypical of what the church passes off as theology. As far as the two nodding nitwits sitting there with him go...well, it is Fox News after all. Idiocy to the 3rd power.
Pedantic moment: it's spelled m-o-r-o-n, folks. Sorry. Pet peeve.

Budbear
They know how it is spelled
They are making fun of the teabaggers
In particular this guy:
http://tinyurl.com/24w97f4

@elspi:

Is he a teabagger? I've seen that image around a lot longer than I remember teabaggers.

Rob, who cares? Teabaggers make up everything they say. I chose to create my own mythology about them and they have to live with that. Indeed, they don't even call themselves teabaggers. And, to put a finer point on it, they claim to be old fashioned patriots, so the tebaggers go way back a couple of hundred years.

Five percent sounds like a low estimate for atheists.

I wish. You might be thinking of the studies that report 15-20% of Americans as "no religion". But the number willing to call themselves "atheists" is more like 2.5%, last I heard. Which is still a huge increase from what it was only a few years ago.

There's a lot of confusion in these figures, of course, with people sometimes unwilling to accept the label despite their unbelief.

There's a lot of confusion in these figures, of course, with people sometimes unwilling to accept the label despite their unbelief.

Yep. In fact, from the ARIS data, about 12% of the American population are declared nonbelievers (in either a personal or impersonal God). But half of those still identify as religious, and only 1.6% actually call themselves atheist or agnostics.

But half of those still identify as religious, and only 1.6% actually call themselves atheist or agnostics.

Ooops. I should have said, "Only 1.6% of the American population." That's about 15% of the population of nonbelievers.

Note that there's very different demographics for those who self-identify as "non-religious" as opposed to "agnostics" and "atheists." See for example http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge… which shows that the non-religious generally know less about religion than the atheists and agnostics. I suspect that many of the people who call themselves "non-religious" or "no religion" are the sort who say that "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual" and things like that.