religion
pharyngula | December 13, 2007And the outcome is pretty ugly for Christianity. The lesson from this story is that when people set aside their religious beliefs, they can be decent to one another; when they use them to provoke violence, well, they look rather stupid.
gregladen | December 13, 2007Never mind the debate on science. We've got a new approach cooking up here. It's all about sin.
A RADICAL Christian group with the ear of prominent politicians has blamed "sinful" Australians for the nation's record drought.
Catch the Fires Ministries, which has links to several prominent politicians including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has hired Festival Hall so 5000 of its followers can pray for rain on Australia Day.
Leader Danny Nalliah said moral decline, not climate change, was responsible for the drought.
"Australia has turned away from Almighty God ... the sinful condition of…
gregladen | December 13, 2007To distract you from all that damn Christmas music..
Toronto Father Beats His Daughter To Death for Cultural-Religious Reasons
Pope Launches Surprise Attack Global Warming Non-Deniers
US Likely To Scuttle Climate Change Talks
Enjoy!
gregladen | December 13, 2007Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (a Christian Right non-profit "think" tank founded by James Clayton "Jim" Dobson) blames the secular media for home schooled Matthew Murray's deadly rampage in Colorado. According to Perkins:
"It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians and evangelicals in particular and the acts of violence that took place in Colorado yesterday."
Sources:
Colorado shootings blamed on "secular media"
Fundamentalist Christian Uses Colorado Shootings for Political Gain…
pharyngula | December 13, 2007IRONY OVERLOAD! The pope opened his mouth again.
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
You've got to wonder — does the pope think this is a good general rule, that we should use evidence rather than ideology to guide our lives, or is he only going to apply it selectively? There's also a subtle double-irony here, because global warming is an evidence-driven conclusion (there is no ideology that thinks major climate change is desirable),…
gregladen | December 12, 2007This just in ...
Virtual world Second Life's chief technology officer ... has resigned. Cory Ondrejka... quit Tuesday and will depart at the end of the year.
...
Philip Rosedale, CEO of the eight-year-old company, said Ondrejka resigned to "pursue new professional challenges" and said he and Ondrejka had strategic differences.
...
Second Life has been criticized for technical problems - graphics that load painfully slowly on older computers, and bizarre glitches where avatars appear unintentionally naked....
Ondrejka has appeared in Second Life as the Flying Spaghetti Monster - [the god of…
jrosenhouse | December 12, 2007Well, I've been grading exams for about ten minutes, and I'm already depressed. (One of my students seems to think that one fourth is an integer. Get the idea?) So how about another post?
Here's Keith Olbermann from last nights' edition of Countdown proving once again why he is the only one worth watching on cable news:
Tonight's winner, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, responding to the two shooting nightmares in Colorado Sunday by e-mailing this to his group, quote, “it is hard not to draw a line between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the…
gregladen | December 12, 2007From Austin Cline.
What are the Christmas Wars?:
In his infamous tract "The International Jew," Henry Ford wrote "The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and other Christian festivals, and their opposition to certain patriotic songs, shows the venom and directness of [their] attack." The John Birch Society complained that the "Godless UN" was conspiring against Christmas. Today, conservatives claim that secularists and liberals are trying to replace Christmas. The enemy changes, but it's still the same conspiracy story.
Foot soldiers in the war on Chrismas, you must…
gregladen | December 12, 2007This just in:
Days after its publication, a largely positive review of The Golden Compass that appeared in Catholic newspapers across the country was retracted this week by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The bishops, who could not be reached for comment, offered no explanation for the decision. But Catholic groups, including the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, have urged moviegoers to boycott the film, saying the film and the book on which it is based are anti-Catholic.
"... there was all kinds of speculation from the day it went up...as to…
razib | December 11, 2007In Britain there's a story circulating about a young woman of Pakistani ethnicity who converted to Christianity and was persecuted by her family. Specifically:
Last week, it was reported that the daughter of a British imam was living under police protection, after receiving death threats from her family for having left Islam.
There's more. Note that this is about converts to Christianity. This is a particular problem, secularism or private atheism are less likely to be the target of violence because it is not a defection to an alternative and vigorous rival faith. There have been other…
pharyngula | December 11, 2007Daughters (and sons) have a special property: normal people simply can't kill them. They drive us crazy, they can break our hearts, but we just can't do them harm ourselves.
So I really don't understand how a father can kill his daughter over her clothing choices. I can yell, and I could ground her, and I could deprive her of privileges…but physically hurt her? Impossible.
Oh. It was over religious apparel. That explains everything. Religion is very good at subverting and destroying normal, healthy family values.
gregladen | December 11, 2007[Repost from gregladen.com]
New findings reported by Harvard researchers in the journal Science suggest that the mind is typically viewed as having multiple dimensions that relate to specific important characteristics of individuals. This study has implications for how individuals develop ethical or moral stands on topics such as abortion, and how individuals view god, life, and death. The study was based an online survey (n= 2,000+). The results suggest that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: One is "agency," or the individual's ability for self-control, morality…
gregladen | December 11, 2007... From conservative Mac Johnson, on Intelligent Design; Student-Run Anchor of Rhode Island College Executive Editor Jessica Albaum on Huckabee the Hate-able ; and the Star Telegram's OpEd by Alan Leshner on science standards in Texas....
Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas
A few short years ago, nobody had ever heard of "Intelligent Design" (ID). Today it is alleged to be one of the hot button issues of our times, the latest front in the culture wars. The sudden prominence of ID is traceable, in my opinion, to two factors.
One is that, even ten years ago, ID had enough confidence…
oracknows | December 10, 2007...here's an example where the conspiracy obviously failed and failed miserably.
And if you like their Chanukah specials, you'll love their Ramadan lunch specials.
You'd think they'd know better in New York City, though.
gregladen | December 10, 2007The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.
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The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.
[source]
This is a strange story of a deranged person who was killed by an armed security guard working at the said church.
"It appears that the…
oracknows | December 10, 2007If you've hung out in forums where Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Truthers, and other conspiracy theorists hang out, as I have done, one thing you'll notice is that these particular purveyors of dubious conspiracy-mongering seem to have a particular love of demonizing Jews (or, as the smarter ones tend to call them in order to try to skirt obvious charges of anti-Semitism, "Zionists"). If you believe such nuts, Jews are responsible for exaggerating the Holocaust, for destroying the World Trade Center, or even for for the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia or even Hurricane Katrina. Indeed,…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Chistians, especially Catholics, continue "tizzy" regarding The Golden Compass, based on books by atheist Philip Pullman. I heard a woman from the Catholic League, spitting and furming on MSNBC about how this movie was really really bad because it would ...
Lead to children to reading the books..
Read the books? Hey, read the books! Next thing you know, the children will be cannibalizing each other when we are not looking....
From a column in the Times Record New, Wichita:
C'mon, people. "The Golden Compass" is a fantasy film - a fantasy film - which generally means it's not real.
You can…
evolvingthoughts | December 9, 2007
Just to head off the obvious:
Do people kill because their religion or ideology tells them that nonbelievers are subhuman? Yes. Do people go to war because their religion or ideology tells them it is their patriotic duty? Yes. Do people walk into a church or missionary school and kill people because of their religion or ideology. Almost never. They do it because they are insane.
Believe it or not, the former actions are adaptive: if you follow the conventions you are accepted in your community, which raises your fitness. It's political, not ideological. The latter - the random killing of…
clock | December 9, 2007This weekend, with 70 degrees F in Chapel Hill, it would have bin a sin to remain indoors. So I didn't. But in the end, at twilight today, my daughter and I went to see Golden Compass, the movie whose first-weekend box-office earnings I wanted to boost.
I made sure not to read any reviews of the movie beforehand. I am, unlike most people who already wrote about it, one of those people who has never read the Pullman books on which the movie is based. Thus, like the majority of the target audience, I was a Pullman "virgin" and I wanted to watch it just like anyone else going out to see a…
gregladen | December 9, 2007This is a bad one, folks.
In Simle North Dakota, at the Middle school, a
...teacher is under investigation after showing a religious-themed video in health class.
"We acknowledge that a video clip was shown in a classroom that violated School Board policy and that a parent has submitted a letter of complaint," said Superintendent Paul Johnson, reading a written statement. "We are investigating the incident and will decide on Monday what action to take."
The teacher showed "A Letter from Hell," off of Godtube.com to a health class Wednesday, according to a letter from Steven and Heather…