religion
pharyngula | September 19, 2006Hey, papal apologists (papalologists?), stop reading this! You won't like it. It's nothing but a couple of links to religion-bashing, prompted by the naked sectarian stupidity of one bizarre religious leader.
Christopher Hitchens takes the pope to task for pissing off Islam (a triviality, as always) and criticizing the application of reason.
It is often said--and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate--that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way.…
jrosenhouse | September 19, 2006When Christopher Hitchens writes about religion, he is always reliable. Over at Slate he offers his thoughts on the Pope's recent dust-up with the Muslim community:
Attempting to revive his moribund church on a visit to Germany, where the Roman congregations are increasingly sparse, Joseph Ratzinger (as I shall always think of him) has managed to do a moderate amount of harm--and absolutely no good--to the very tense and distraught discussion now in progress between Europe and Islam. I strongly recommend that you read the full text of his lecture at the University of Regensburg last Tuesday…
pharyngula | September 19, 2006Ugh. John Pieret is right: this effort by Michael Shermer to reconcile evolution with conservative theology is hideous, on multiple levels. It takes a special kind of arrogance to think that Christians are going to consult Shermer, a godless hellbound skeptic, on how to interpret the fine details of the Bible. Either reject it or buy into it—but nobody is going to believe that Shermer accepts the religious premises of the book. He's being a kind of concern troll on a grand scale.
It's also nonsense.
Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by…
pharyngula | September 18, 2006Now we've got unconfirmed rumors that Steve Irwin was born again shortly before he died. You may recall that Charles Darwin was also tarred with claims of a deathbed conversion, too.
The message is clear. Don't convert, or you'll die.
The only question is whether it's Jesus that does the execution, or whether wandering evangelicals are actually serial killers. And since I don't believe in Jesus…
razib | September 17, 2006...to show that he regrets his gaffe.
[From the Muslim Onion]
This whole fiasco is making Sam Harris' point for sure. Too bad I have no expectation that this sort of irrationality can be banished as opposed to managed in the future....
Though seriously.
1) The Pope quoted Manuel II Palaiologos who basically implied that Islam was a derivative and uncouth religion. I think that context matters here, Manuel was a erudite man, and he surely drew upon the tradition started by John of Damascus, in Heresy of the Ishmaelites, to view Islam as simply the most prominent in a long line of un-Orthodox…
pharyngula | September 17, 2006I've already done my fair share of pope-bashing, so I won't kick him any more over this latest episode. Instead, I'll just tell everyone to go read my homies in the science community, Revere and Sean (who is particularly telling on that jarringly bogus "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul" claim), and my fellow Minnesotan, Norwegianity, and while you're plumbing the Minnesota mentality, you might as well take in Tild's deconversion tale and regular Spong blogging…if there's some human heart beating under the religious vestments, it ain't Ratzinger's, and…
razib | September 16, 2006I recently read the remarks of the Pope. Everyone is focusing on the aggressive tone taken toward Islam. Muslims are reacting in a typically bestial manner. But it seems to me that Benedict is being disingenuous in pretending as if Christianity was spread purely through moral suasion. I have already noted the vandalism and violence sanctioned by Christian Emperors, starting with Theodosius, against pagans their sacred temples late in the 4th century. The conversion of figures like Clovis or Vladimir meant that their peoples entered the faith by fiat, certainly this was not the case…
clock | September 15, 2006Holy Smoke: Burning incense, candles pollute air in churches:
Incense and candles release substantial quantities of pollutants that may harm health, a detailed new study of air quality in a Roman Catholic church suggests.
Even brief exposure to contaminated air during a religious service could be harmful to some people, says atmospheric scientist Stephan Weber of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany. A previous study in the Netherlands indicated that the pollutants in smoke from incense and candles may be more toxic than fine-particle pollution from sources such as vehicle…
clock | September 15, 2006An interesting new study of religiosity in America:
One God, four views:
"Not all Americans see the powerful old man in the sky"
Really?
The authors suggest religion may most successfully motivate individuals through what it can offer them in spiritual intimacy and congregational connectivity rather than through demands backed by threats of divine punishment. Believers in an "angry" God tend to reject the idea that church and state are or can be separate, and are more likely to feel that one's religious faith is exclusively the correct path of righteousness.
Read the whole thing...
mikethemadbiologist | September 15, 2006From Kristine at Amused Muse:
People are always pointing at scientists and screaming, "Why don't you find a cure for cancer?" Well, now that scientists finally have, loopy-loo fundies deny the treatment for their daughters! Screw them. Not only should this vaccination be required for all young girls, any parent who seriously thinks that this "encourages immorality" should have his or her children taken away. They aren't fit to be parents.
Pregnancy as punishment, cancer as coercion. Welcome to Bush's America.
razib | September 14, 2006I think this comment in the message boards needs to be highlighted:
I think it's important to know that functionally, stated atheism in Japan is quite different than stated atheism in the west. In Japan, "religion" (the word itself in Japanese: "shuukyo" was a Meiji era invention), is generally seen as a family affair, namely funerals. Actual religious practice such as shrine visiting or New Year's is seen as cultural despite the fact that people are going through religious motions such as prayer and charm buying. The act of buying charms in and of itself is interesting. A professor of mine…
razib | September 14, 2006Since this blog has basically turned into a forum for my opinions about religion, I thought I'd offer my comments on Pope Benedict's challenge to Islam and secularism. First, I'll point you to John Wilkins' deconstruction of Benedict's misimpressions of evolutionary theory. Ah, the bad.
But what about the good? The good is that Benedict is challenging Islam and demanding that it join the civilized and castrated stable of modern organized religions. The universe is characterized by cycles, and organized religions arose first in their prototypical form with the rising priesthoods of city…
pharyngula | September 14, 2006"Archbishop of York"? What kind of silly, made-up title is that?
The Archbishop of York has said British Christians should see Muslims as allies in the struggle against secularism.
In a speech at York Minster, Dr John Sentamu said British Muslims were not offended by Christianity and preferred it to a secular state.
Or maybe he was just mistranslated? Apparently not.
It has often been Muslims, as well as leaders of other faiths, who have joined with Christians in refusing to accept the creeping secularisation that would replace 'Christmas' with 'Winterval', and remove references to faith…
razib | September 13, 2006Ed Brayton and Jason Rosenhouse have long posts up about the recent dispute between PZ Myers and Ken Miller, the Roman Catholc cell biologist who has been one of the most prominent popular expositors of evolutionary biology in these United States. You can read my 10 questions for Ken Miller to get some sense of him through my own idiosyncratic lens.
Since Jason and Ed are bringing up issues relevant to the broad church of the anti-Creationist movement, I take interest. Though I am a civilian, that is, I leave the fighting to others so I may do other things, there a few general points…
clock | September 12, 2006Why are religious people religious, in two parts: Why do religious wingnuts think the way they do? Part I and Why do religious wingnuts think the way they do? Part II
Why are creationists creationists, in three parts: Why are creationists creationist?, Why are creationists creationist? 2 - conceptual spaces and Why are creationists creationist? 3: compartments and coherence.
Why conservatives take conservative jobs and suck if sucked into liberal professions, in two parts: It takes talent to make good schlock TV and Conservatives in the classroom
razib | September 12, 2006Baylor university has a new survey (PDF) of American religion out, and it is an excellent supplement to The American Religious Identification Survey.
Here are some findings I found interesting:
Instead of 14% of Americans with "No religion" (nearly doubling in a generation) the new survey suggests that a more accurate number is 10.8% (still an increase). The issue here is that the set of individuals who a) attend religious services b) disavows any affiliation has increased greatly over the past generation. The number of young people (18-30) with "No religion" is greater than the median…
pharyngula | September 12, 2006Give all the fundamentalist Christians a copy of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, then sit back and wait for them to kill each other. I'm amused that the article calls it a "theological argument": the guy gets upset at the movie, sees his wife, calls her evil, and tries to strangle her. Yep, that's a "theological argument" in a nutshell.
(via Andrew Brown)
pharyngula | September 11, 2006He has asked me to post this section of his book to show that he had not suggested that human origins and the Cambrian explosion might have been a miracle.
To the nonbeliever, there is no spiritual reality, and hence no miracles. To a person of faith, miracles display the greater purposes of God, giving them a meaning that transcends physical reality.
If this is true, why shouldn't we allow that the creation of our species was a miracle? Or why not agree that the sudden explosion of life in the Cambrian might have been a miracle. Both might have been. In 1900, we could easily have said that…
pharyngula | September 11, 2006Because their priorities are screwed up.
Benedict—on the second day of a visit to his native
Bavaria—said that spreading the word of Jesus Christ
was more important than all the emergency and development
aid that rich churches like those in Germany gave to poor
countries.
Don't even get me started on his complaints that science is scaring away the gullible, tithing rubes.
(via Hank Fox)
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2006After reading PZ's post and the follow-up about Ken Miller's statements regarding atheism, I was just going to leave the subject alone. I usually find the arguments predictable, boring; there's always a lot of talking past each other. But for some reason, this particular argument over Ken Miller's remarks intrigues me. So, foolishly, I'm going to dive in. (I'm partially responding to particular claims by both sides, and also adding a few points of my own.) Here goes nuthin':
1) If you believe in a God who intervenes in history, then evolution is a theological challenge to that belief.…