religion

I am sure glad that others have started parsing the numbers of the new report on 'The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science'. Duane Smith takes a close look at a couple of tables in the report and concludes that, while relatively few people say they get their information on evolution directly from the Bible and Church, many do so indirectly, by beeing steeped in their comunities' beliefs transmitted by family, friends and neighbors (as well as local and church-run media). Interesting take (and I agree with him on this). What have you found so far?

I've just started reading Wilson's The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and I'm enjoying it—my wife read it first and recommends it, too—and I wish it would help. I'm a bit cynical, though, especially since I just mentioned the sad affair of Joel Hunter (certain evangelical Christians refuse to consider any issues beyond the gay and the fetus), and now I caught (via the Friendly Atheist) an episode of This American Life on Carlton Pearson, an evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had a thriving church with tens of thousands of members, when he had an insight: there was no hell. No…

What's really important to the Christian Coalition? The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland, A Church Distributed, in Longwood, Fla., said he quit as president-elect of the group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson because he realized he would be unable to broaden the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. He hoped to include issues such as easing poverty and saving the environment. "These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said. Well, I suspect Jesus would have been fanatical about a lot of old rabbinical minutia that we'd find…

Love for animals, even the dead ones, can sometimes go too far, dontcha think?

Below I made a reference to the heritability of religiosity. In a chat with Christer Chris that the heritability for religiosity was 0.5, and he was surprised at the result. I decided to double-check, and here is the latest paper: Estimates of the degree of genetic and environmental influences on religiousness have varied widely. This variation may, in part, be due to age differences in the samples under study. To investigate the heritability of religiousness and possible age changes in this estimate, both current and retrospective religiousness were assessed by self-report in a sample of…

I admire actors who completely immerse themselves in the characters they play. But nobody has reached the hights of dedication as much as Keisha Castle-Hughes, a 16-year old actress playing Virgin Mary in an upcoming movie - she is pregnant! Forget the money she'll earn doing he movie - she can rake in millions if she starts a cult around the divinity of her child. I am just not sure if the conception was immaculate. Full story: Unwed and pregnant, like Mary

Does Islam Forbid Befriending Non-Muslims?. It is obvious that Jews patronize the Jews and Christians patronize the Christians, so why not Muslims patronize Muslims and support their own people. This verse is not telling us to be against Jews or Christians, but it is telling us that we should take care of our own people and we must support each other. Num 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

I just got this email, addressed to "Dear Blog Author". This must be the internet equivalent of evangelical door-knocking. Invitation to Join Christian Bloggers A small group of us have started a new site called Christian Bloggers. Our prayer and intent is to bring Christians closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community. While many of us have different "theologies", we all share one true saviour. Would you be interested in joining Christian Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign…

I am still sleepy from all that tryptophan in turkey meat and the Evolution wine, so I don't think I have the energy to write a big post now - I'll leave much of my thoughts on the matter for a post-weekend post reviewing Dawkins' The God Delusion. But I have to chime in briefly by sending you to the relevant links and copying some of the comments I wrote on those comment threads. Brace yourself for a lot of reading as there are several posts and many comments on each of the posts. Sorry, the links are not neccessarly in order, but you'll get the gist of the argument anyway. Ed Brayton…

David points out that they are talking about Mormons in The Corner today relating to Mitt Romney. Jonah thinks that the Mormon thing might help An evangelical who is married to a Mormon thinks that it isn't a big issue Anti-Mormon readers weigh in A Mormon comments on the anti-Mormons Mormonism is a falsifiable cult Another Mormon emailer I posted something very long on Mormons last year. I am skeptical that Romney can make it past the Republican primaries, because ceteris paribus he just can't match up. I can't believe that the Republicans can't produce a convential Christian with Romney's…

Dinesh D'Souza, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, defends organized religion from criticism that links it with violence and wars: - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present." Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three…

Some brilliant Republican solons from the great state of Missouri have released an official state report that argues that abortion has led to illegal immigration. The 'argument?' Abortion has eliminated U.S. workers, leading to a need for illegal immigrants. Clearly, these brilliant minds have never heard of the meat-packing industry. The meat-packing industry used to be unionized, and, consequently, virtually all of its workers were either legal residents or citizens. Then the unions were busted, resulting in crappy pay and dangerous conditions, and many people--rightfully so--did not…

Wow, wow. Lots of chatter around the ScienceBlogs about religion and evolution, etc. etc. Ed Brayton starts it off, drawing a line in the sand against those with an "anti-theist agenda." John Lynch tends to side with Ed. Our resident Ozzie, John Wilkins has been getting into it with Jason Rosenhouse. Josh at Thoughts from Kansas has criticized Dawkins. And of course P.Z. Myers has his own views on these topics. A few points. 1) This isn't a two-faced coin. I think in Ed's post he overreaches a bit. Some people who are militant atheists are pretty nuts. Other people aren't. Some people…

Imagine an ecosystem in which all the players are groups defined by their religion: fundies, liberal believers, apathetics, atheists, etc. Then, use the ecological and evolutionary priniciples, e.g., competitive exclusion, niche-construction, arms-races, parasitism, camouflage, symbiosis, etc. to model the interactions between these entities ("populations"). Amanda made a first stab at it. Can you do more? How do Unitarians fit in that environment? Or Humanist Jews? How does the US ecosystem differ from that of other countries (island biogegraphy?)? What are the lessons for atheists…

There's some loony Indonesian witch doctor trying to put a voodoo curse on GW Bush. While I can sympathize with the sentiment, the method is a stupid waste of time (except, perhaps, that it has gotten the witch doctor in the news, so maybe it's just a high-tech way to drum up business)—and it's not something anyone could take seriously. Or so I thought, until a link on Alicublog led me to this fairly well known wingnut, Rod Dreher. He starts out with some offensive macho colonialist remarks, punctuated with a description of this well known scene: One of my favorite scenes in all of cinema is…

One of the maddening things about the creationists is that they are rarely forthright about their agenda. Euphimisms like "teach the controversy" and "fairness" abound. This leads to a lot of support that would not exist were their true agenda to be placed front-and-center. Amanda points out, in an excellent post on the pregnancy-as-punishment anti-abortion right, how this also applies to the abortion debate (an aside: why is evolution a 'controversy', but abortion a 'debate'? Does that mean anything?): Liberals make the whole thing worse by being obtuse about how the anti-choice movement…

Why is it permissible for Muslims to propagate the One True Faith amongst the kuffar, while the kuffar are not allowed to preach their shirk amongst the believers? Watch the video below, and you'll see that it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4! Bow down to Allah, the one most high!

Chopra's latest attempt to critique Dawkins is as lame as his first. I summarized that first one as "Well, you can't see love in your fancy microscope, now can you, Dr Smarty Pants?"; this one is the Incredibly Agile Evasive God trick. He's going to play a game and try to define his god and religion into a kind of vague god he's going to conveniently pull of out his pocket, one fuzzy enough that no one can criticize it, and he's also going to engage in some blatant projection: But Dawkins has pulled the same trick that he resorts to over and over. This is the us-versus-them trick. Either you…

As happened in so many places in this last election, a local Democrat won a solid victory over a Republican in the District 50 election. His opponent sent a "concession" letter—see if you can spot what's peculiar and a bit offensive about it. Congratulations on winning the District 50 senate race. Your phone is "busy"...no doubt with good wishes! I've enjoyed much of this race, especially the people I've met...even you! I see your deficits--not all of them, and your potential--but not all of it. Only your Creator knows the real potential He's put in you. Get to know Him and know yourself...…

"Ali Eteraz" has started a new site, States of Islam. My friend Aziz Poonawalla has a post up offering his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am aware of two of the headline contributors, Haroon Moghul and Thabet. Though I disagree with them, they're both smart, so I indulge them in their error. Being a SCOOP based site I've set up an account and might post a diary or two flagrantly exhibiting my ridda. I hope Ali indulges me.