religion
pharyngula | October 14, 2010Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard has written a book in which he reveals Catholic thinking about AIDS.
The Archbishop who is seen as a conservative does not pull his punches. Speaking about AIDS he says that this is a kind "immanent justice".
I note that the archbishop is probably mortal, and appears to be aging. If he someday suffers miserably from a prostate cancer that is ripping his guts apart, I hope he finds comfort in it as a kind of "immanent justice". If he should suffer a massive stroke and his brain should bleed and fail, I hope he has a last moment of awareness to appreciate the "…
pharyngula | October 13, 2010An Italian woman, Nosheen Butt, and her mother were resisting the idea of an arranged marriage, which annoyed the men in the family. So they took action to put the women in their place.
The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butt, was hospitalised with head injuries and a broken arm after her 19-year-old brother beat her with a stick in the courtyard of their building in Novi, near the northern city of Modena.
According to Modena prosecutors' initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butt, a 53-year-old construction worker, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2010I should probably warn you that this is a long one. So either get comfortable or go elsewhere!
Josh Rosenau has a post up, replying to this earlier post from Jerry Coyne, who was discussing this L. A. Times article about the recent secular humanist conference in Los Angeles. At the conference there was a panel discussion between Chris Mooney, Genie Scott, P. Z. Myers and Victor Stenger on everyone's favorite topic: Accommodationism!
During his presentation, Mooney repeated some of the sentiments from his USA Today op-ed discussing the notion of “atheist spirituality.”. I discussed some…
pharyngula | October 12, 2010There has been a recent rash of publicized suicides by young gay people who have been bullied and intimidated and shamed by their peers…and we're also getting a rash of Christian apologetics by the blind bigots of homophobia who simultaneously declaim their pious regrets that these poor children of God couldn't find their way to redemption, while continuing the slander of damning their sinning lives. It's hard to get more unctuously hypocritical than the odious Albert Mohler, who whimpers 'think of the children!' while protesting that as good Christians they must condemn the sin, and he sadly…
pharyngula | October 11, 2010We've all heard about the Chilean miners trapped in a cave-in, who have been sustained for over two months by supplies delivered through a narrow tunnel drilled down to them. Their rescue is imminent, with an escape tunnel being drilled and almost at their position — they should be out this week. Personally, I credit technology with saving them, but…three religious groups are squabbling over which version of god deserves thanks.
The three Christian denominations have each claimed credit for what they say is divine intervention in the survival - and expected imminent rescue - of the 33 men who…
gregladen | October 7, 2010When I was a little kid, my cousin, who was an actual Catholic Arch Bishop (Archbishop of Anchorage) came over to the house one day, and I saw family elders approach him, one by one, genuflect and kiss his ring. Then one or two of my relatives brought him sacred objects for him to bless. One of the objects was the wooden cross that hung on our wall, similar to others hanging on Catholic walls in other Catholic homes, near the main entrance way to the house. It was hollow and included several items that would be used for the performance of either extreme unction (the "last rights") or, if…
pharyngula | October 7, 2010The Smithsonian has opened a new permanent Hall of Human Origins exhibit, which means I need to get out to Washington DC sometime. Unfortunately, it gets a mixed review from Greg Mayer. It sounds like the museum faced the standard dilemma of whether to emphasize information or interaction, and parts of the exhibit steered a little too far in the direction of interactive fluffiness. It also has some underlying weirdness: the hall was funded by a Tea Party bigwig, David Koch, and it also had a "Broader Social Impacts Committee" of mostly religious advisors, which is just plain odd — what was…
jrosenhouse | October 6, 2010The reason for the recent blog drought, I am happy to report, is that the book writing has been going well lately. I shot past the 80,000 word mark the other day, which leaves just 20,000 to go. Alas, it is now clear that the first draft will be somewhat overlength, so I am not quite as close to finishing the draft as it might seem. Still, I managed to polish off a few chapters that had been giving me a hard time. There will probably be substantial rewriting, of course, but revising is always easier than creating. At any rate, I have been hammering the book so hard lately that other…
pharyngula | October 6, 2010Sometimes…sometimes you just want to kick some ass. And the only thing holding you back is the unpleasant task afterward of having to scrub your boots.
This is an actual article from USA Today's "Faith and Reason" section, which doesn't seem to have much reason behind it. It's by Cathy Lynn Grossman, who claims to love talking about "visions and values, faith and ethics", and yet, manages to provide the most nauseating commentary on the recent Nobel for in vitro fertilization yet, even worse than anything I've seen from the Catholics. Consider these repugnant questions from Ms Grossman.
Do…
pharyngula | October 4, 2010
You already know I dislike religion; it's a dreadful tool for distorting human values. I'm also an opponent of sexist socialization that short-changes women, in particular. How about if we combine both? Behold, My Princess Bible(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), a book you can give to your little girl to turn them into Disneyesque Bible freaks.
I'm a little disappointed, though. Is there also a Bratz Bible?
Sadly, this thing gets mostly good reviews at Amazon, and there's only one 1-star review. That's not the worst of it, either: the one bad review complains that there isn't enough Jesus and too…
pharyngula | October 4, 2010The head of the Pontificia Academia Pro Vita, the specifically crazy anti-choice arm of the Catholic Church, has already issued a statement about the Nobel Prize awarded to an IVF pioneer. He's against it, of course.
Among his peculiar complaints is the objection that it "didn't treat the underlying problem of infertility but rather skirted it", which is rather odd. This:
Couples can't have children↓Couples use IVF↓Couples now have children
Looks to me like a rather direct way to treat infertility. Where they once could have no children, now they have children.
They also don't like the fact…
pharyngula | October 4, 2010Eric Dejaeger is a Catholic priest and pedophile who benefited greatly from church policy: when it was learned that he was a child-raping monster, the Catholic Church did the upright, moral thing and kept him on as a priest, but simply shipped him off to the Canadian north where he'd only be raping the Inuit. When the law caught up with him even in that remote place, he fled…and guess where he found shelter and employment? Back in the arms of Mother Church, of course.
The Belgian-born priest, who became a Canadian citizen in 1977, is wanted for three counts of indecent assault on a male and…
gregladen | October 3, 2010Owing to Fear of Fatwa ...
From the Daily Cartoonist:
Universal Uclick has confirmed that several papers (upwards of 20) have asked for a replacement for this Sunday's Non Sequitur because it mentions the word "Muhammad." The cartoon by Wiley Miller depicts a lazy, sunny park scene with the caption, "Picture book title voted least likely to ever find a publisher... 'Where's Muhammad?'" Characters in the park are buying ice cream, fishing, roller skating, etc. No character is depicted as even Middle Eastern....
more
Just so you know: There is no sect of Islam that prohibits the use of…
oracknows | October 1, 2010Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times, thanks to R01 deadlines. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from back in September 2007 that, shockingly, as far as I can tell I've never "rerun" before. Remember, if you've been reading less than three years it's probably new to you, and, even if you have been reading more than three years, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged.
As I usually do on Thursday nights, I was perusing my legendary Folder…
pharyngula | September 30, 2010The Pew Forum surveyed Americans on their knowledge of religion, and discovered that the group most generally knowledgeable about world religions was…those unshriven hellbound godless folk. This does not sit well with many believers, who have long preferred to relegate atheists to a hell of total unawareness of the gods, smugly assuming that if only we knew what they knew, we'd be True Believers in god in general and their specific, narrow sect in particular. That we might actually know what they believe and not only choose to not believe, but also to regard their superstitions as ridiculous…
gregladen | September 30, 2010It was Blasphemy that led me to Atheism by a somewhat circuitous yet in the end well marked path. This is the story of my first step on that path.
It was the lies they kept telling me.
You can do whatever you want, god will forgive you if you ask for it. That did not seem logical or fair.
If you watched a Jewish ceremony at the temple you would turn into a skeleton. The nuns actually told me that.
If you even go near a Jewish Temple you will be cursed. One of our favorite places to play (because we pretended the star in the window meant it was the Marshall's office like in Gun Smoke)…
gregladen | September 30, 2010Except Atheists and Jews. They know stuff. Watch Penn Jillette take a quiz on religion:
I love this quote: "I gave my daughter a bible. That's how you make atheists."
jrosenhouse | September 27, 2010People I respect keep telling me there is marvelous work being done in the area of theology. I have never encountered it, and not for lack of looking. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether perhaps I am just reading the wrong things. The religion and theology section of my university's library is quite large, and the percentage of it I have read is quite small. So I am open to the possibility that the really good arguments are in the books I have not read.
As it happens, Jerry Coyne has been wondering the same thing. A philosopher correspondent of his selected two books for him to read.…
gregladen | September 26, 2010It's PZ Myers, who has been no friend to the crackers, burying two books of holy scripture and planting daffodils on them. Or, at least, I think it's PZ (I can tell by his nice suit). And it might not be daffodils. Whatever. The point is, if you support the right of a person to make a point by burying the Koran and the Bible (copies they own on their own property we shall assume) then visit this video on YouTube and vote it up.
The original post by PZ is here.
The YouTube link is here.
The original video is below the fold.
I do want to point out that when I suggested that no more…
pharyngula | September 24, 2010When I visited Australia last year, the media was all gaga over the idea of an Australian saint — the Catholic church was going to canonize Mary MacKillop (the people I hung out with while I was there, though, didn't give a good goddamn for the nonsense). Well, now there's some ironic news going around: during her lifetime, Mary MacKillop had been temporarily banished from the Catholic church and thrown out on the street. What had she done, you might ask.
Go ahead, guess.
A hint: she had complained about and reported some priests in the church. Can you guess what they had done?
Sure you can.…