religion
oracknows | November 16, 2006Although I'm clearly not as vociferous about this as other ScienceBloggers, I do remain concerned about the rise of fundamentalist religion, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. Whenever dogmatic, literal, fundamentalist interpretation of whatever holy scriptures someone believes in takes hold, the brain shuts off, and no other interpretation other than the narrow interpretation of the fundamentalist is viewed as acceptable. Another pernicious effect is that, if scripture seems to conflict with science, science loses, and religion-inspired non-science like creationism takes…
jrosenhouse | November 15, 2006John Wilkins has offered this reply to my criticism of his earlier essay on the subject of agnosticism. Well worth reading, even though I sitll think he's wrong. He seems to think that in order to be justified in asserting “X does not exist” you must be able to prove that X, indeed, does not exist. This seems like the wrong standard to me.
Biochemist Larry Moran weighs in with these worthy senitments:
John, with all due respect, if you walk like an atheist and talk like an atheist then, to all intents and purposes, you're a practicing atheist, whether you want to admit it or not. You can…
pharyngula | November 15, 2006For a little context, you need to know that we had a foreign exchange student from Italy living with us for a year. If you've been reading this blog for long, you may also know that I have somewhat strong feelings about religion—OK, I'm one of those surly evil atheists your momma warned you to avoid.
So now go read this story of a Polish foreign exchange student who came to the US…and found his host parents were Christian fundamentalists. Keep in mind that foreign exchange programs are often stressful, and sometimes the students and host families experience a little culture shock, but still…
pharyngula | November 14, 2006Religious ritual can make you very, very sick, and even kill you. This somewhat morbid, mildly gross, and terribly sad story about the Essenes, the religious zealots who authored the Dead Sea scrolls, is an interesting anthropological look at an ancient failed cult.
It seems that their requirements for dealing with their own waste were mistakenly ineffective. They excreted into pits that protected parasites, which they would then carry back…and before they could return to the group, they had to bathe by total immersion in a cistern, which meant they'd basically soak in each other's…
clock | November 14, 2006Yikes! This was here in my neighborhood, in Winston-Salem, NC! Poor guy - did he get an education! What does he think about America now?
My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists:
When Polish student Michael Gromek, 19, went to America on a student exchange, he found himself trapped in a host family of Christian fundamentalists. What followed was a six-month hell of dawn church visits and sex education talks as his new family tried to banish the devil from his soul. Here's his story.
Read the whole thing - it is an incredible story. The family's whole purpose in taking him in…
razib | November 13, 2006Aziz points me to this article over at alt.muslim which reviews Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma. It is a fair review, but this caught my attention:
...Buruma's parallelisation of the careers of both Fortuyn and Van Gogh and their capitalisation on Islamophobia begs the question of how the Enlightenment virtues of freedom and reason could have been politically perverted to justify hatred for a racial underclass. This crucial question, posed repeatedly, if not directly, by Buruma through his coinage of the term "Enlightenment fundamentalist" represents the most intellectually fascinating…
jrosenhouse | November 13, 2006For the final installment of my Dawkins series, let's have a look at what my SciBling, John Wilkins has to say. In this post, Wilkins takes issue with Dawkins' discussion of agnosticism. Dawkins believes that agnosticism is unjustified fence-sitting. Wilkins thinks Dawkins is wrong.
I'm with Dawkins. Let's have a look at the details.
Wilkins quotes Dawkins as follows:
Philosophers cite this question as one that can never be answered, no matter what new evidence might one day become available. And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced - too eagerly in my view - that the…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2006A while ago, I wrote about the effect that the rise of certain forms of Christianity was having on the military. To summarize: certain ideological or religious views mean that you might not be able to do your job very well. Bob Broughton carries the analysis over to the White House staff. His surprising finding?
The number one academic recruiting ground for the White House interns is Patrick Henry College (italics mine):
At about 35 minutes into this program, Harris said that the main source of White House interns is not Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Bush's alma mater Yale. Instead, they…
pharyngula | November 12, 2006You have to applaud the courage of this history teacher in Kearny, New Jersey:
Among his remarks in open class were statements that a being must have created the universe, that the Christian Bible is the word of God, and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark. If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, "you belong in hell." Referring to a Muslim student who had been mentioned by name, he lamented what he saw as her inevitable fate should she not convert. In an attempt to promote biblical creationism, he also dismissed evolution and the Big Bang as non-scientific, arguing by…
razib | November 11, 2006The Inductivist cranked the GSS to figure which American ethnic groups are spiritual and which are not, and this is what he found:
SpiritualityEthnic Group
1.92East Asians
2.78Scandanavians
2.8Italians
2.9Irish
2.9Germans
2.91Mexicans
2.95English/Welsh
3.12American Indians
3.26Blacks
3.29Scots
pharyngula | November 10, 2006According to the mealy-mouthed Jim Wallis, anyway, the recent election was a defeat for the religious extremists and the secular Left, and a great victory for moderate and conservative Christians. Fortunately, we've got Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden to administer a corrective, or I'd have to throw a snit and go start piling faggots for the long-postponed atheist revolution. Since they've got it under control, I guess I can let it pass. This time.
But Wallis does join Amy Sullivan on The List.
razib | November 10, 2006This week's selection from Islam Online is pretty strange, and involves transexuality and its relationship to Islamic law. Enjoy below the fold....
Question:
I have a very strange question. I'am 5 months ago turned to Islam alhamdulillah, I was a non-believer. Now I have a question about my past. There are some answers but they are for a person who is already Muslim. This is the question: I am a female woman in Holland but I was born as a boy, I have the mind and the feelings of a woman here in the Netherlands and also in outer countries they have operations to make this possible. I know…
oracknows | November 9, 2006Here's a real example of religious insanity:
LONDON, Kentucky (AP) - A woman died after being bitten by a snake during a serpent-handling service at church, police said.
Linda Long, 48, of London, Ky, died Sunday at University of Kentucky Medical Center, said Brad Mitchell, a detective with the Laurel County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday. Long died about four hours after the bite was reported, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Officials said Long attended East London Holiness Church. Neighbours of the church told the newspaper the church practices serpent handling.
Snake handling is based…
pharyngula | November 8, 2006Minnesota elected a Muslim, Keith Ellison to the US House of Representatives. If he'd made his religion an issue, I'd be unhappy about this (just as I am about any other pious politician), but he didn't—even though his opposition did—so I'm not perturbed. He seems to be advocating the right stuff.
Ellison said his race and religion weren't as important as issues such as Iraq and health insurance for all. "We still have 43 million American uninsured. This is a problem for everyone in the United States," he said.
He advocates an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq along with strongly liberal…
razib | November 7, 2006Here is a radio documentary about the "prayer warriors" of Pastor Ted from 1997. I recall listening to this and finding it a bit peculiar at the time (and being disgusted by the documentarian's attraction to what seems like a cult, but hey, sheep are sheep, without them Ubermensch would have no raw material).
pharyngula | November 7, 2006Now look what you've done, O American Religion. Even thoughtful people like Shelley are getting fed up with you.
Regardless of how this vote goes this week, we can no longer ignore the elephant sitting in the corner that is religious influence on politics and government. People are not always going to be able to complacently have their 'faith' and their 'science', because in too many cases belief in one denies the existence of the other. Members of a church may have to consider challenging the precepts of the church, and individual churches challenge their association with a larger body.…
oracknows | November 6, 2006OK, I wasn't planning on writing on the whole Haggard imbroglio again. (Famous last words, eh?) Then, via Andrew Sullivan, I came across this little post by a blogging evangelical pastor from Seattle named Mark Driscoll:
Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is…
razib | November 6, 2006I recently re-read the Epic of Gilgamesh. This translation was particularly helpful in that there were notations next to passages with clear parallels in the Hebrew Bible (in Genesis). I thought about this when I watched a YouTube clip of Richard Dawkins confront Ted Haggard last year about his beliefs. Haggard, a successful pastor, seemed totally oblivious to the outside world in his intellectal worldview. For example, he states that there are "no contradictions in the Bible," a work "written over 1,500 years by 40 authors." And yet reading the Epic of Gilgamesh how could one not but…