religion
grrlscientist | June 26, 2010tags: Best Church of God Vs. An Atheist, religion, cults, faith, funny, humor, comedy, social commentary, Greg Epstein, books, streaming video
A silly video about a bunch of wackaloon religious wingnuts and an atheist humanist discussing religion and how god forces people to live moral and decent lives. (The video is silly, but the protest signs are rather amusing).
The Best Church of God takes on heretical "humanist" Greg Epstein, famed author of the controversial book, "Good Without God."-- edited by Aemilia Scott
gregladen | June 26, 2010In which I provide my two cents regarding the current discussion between PZ Myers, Pamela Gay, and others.
The relevant posts and threads:
Should skeptic organizations be atheist organizations? by PZ Myers.
Why are we lying to Pamela Gay? by Seth Manapio
Separation between Scientific Truth & Belief by Pamela Gay.
I'm going to assume that you've read these, or are at least familiar with the main points of the argument.
I know Pamela Gay well enough to know that she is a smart person, a nice person, a well meaning person, an important member of the science education community, an…
pharyngula | June 25, 2010There's a documentary coming out about how the Mormons influenced California's Proposition 8, and Salon has an interview with the director, Reed Cowan. He makes the point that it wasn't just that they raised buckets of money, but that they had willing volunteers.
Nobody does it better than the Mormons. Money is one thing. What outsiders don't understand is the volunteer aspect: the "means and time" trigger language that comes from the temple, and how it literally played to their obedience.
Their greatest asset is the obedience of their people. They had people signed up to go street by…
pharyngula | June 24, 2010The Belgian police have raided offices of the Catholic church in search of evidence of the usual Catholic crime — raping children. (It's funny: ask someone to name a Catholic crime, and what's the first thing they think of? It's the worst PR in the world.)
I'm hoping that they're just warming up for the big one — I'd like to see a UN raid of the Vatican, with a whole line of shame-faced old men in dresses led out to the paddy wagons like a transvestite Mafia mob.
pharyngula | June 24, 2010The apologetic gang at BioLogos is complaining again — Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and I didn't understand their recent piece by Daniel Harrell on Adam and Eve, and oh, it is so hard to be the ones in the middle of all those atheist and creationist extremists.
Note to BioLogos: squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you're halfway to crazy town.
The core of Falk's article consists of complaining that we didn't understand what they were talking about, and took their article out of context…
pharyngula | June 23, 2010An infamously anti-gay Lutheran pastor, Tom Brock, has been outed as gay himself. Unfortunately, the outing is ethically compromised by the fact that the writer accomplished it by infiltrating a confidential 12-step program for gay men dealing with "chastity issues". Basically, he had to violate a promise of confidentiality. This is a tough one; if the program were a sincere effort by these men to deal honestly with their sexual orientation, then this revelation violates trust and reduces the effectiveness of the program, and does actual harm to innocent participants. I can't condone that.…
gboustead | June 22, 2010
In the run-up to this year's Faith and Science panel at the 2010 World Science Festival, there was some concern expressed (here and here) about our sponsors' influence on programming. In light of such criticism, we thought it would be a good time to reiterate the Festival's absolute editorial independence, as addressed last year by World Science Festival co-founders, Brian Greene and Tracy Day, in response to similar concerns:
The World Science Festival produces programs according to the strictest standards of editorial integrity. It goes without saying—but for clarity’s sake we shall say…
pharyngula | June 20, 2010How else to interpret this moronic inaction from the state?
While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.
State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.
"Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."
Senator Adley! There…
grrlscientist | June 20, 2010tags: Religion, weird beliefs, suicide bombings, wars, funny, humor, comedy, social commentary, mind control, streaming video
The first time this video was uploaded to youtube, it was removed for being "inappropriate." Fortunately, a bunch of people also uploaded it to their youtube accounts and mirrored it. Well, the original filmographer uploaded it again, so youtube .. it's baaaack!
grrlscientist | June 19, 2010tags: Religion is the Problem, religion, cults, faith, funny, humor, comedy, social commentary, Bill Maher, television, streaming video
Bill Maher points out some of the more idiotic beliefs that various religions claim are truths .. beliefs that have been shown to be false.
pharyngula | June 17, 2010Oh, no, says Scott Walter, the Templeton Foundation has no nefarious or dishonest aims in reconciling science and religion — they bravely encourage and support alternative viewpoints to theirs. Just to show that they really do have empirical evidence that they are seriously considering the issues, he gives an extensive short list of great laughable examples of Templeton bravery.
They sponsored a talk by Terry Eagleton, and he's a Marxist! He may be a Marxist, but you will be hard-pressed to find a more incoherent simpering apologist for traditional religion than Eagleton.
One of their…
pharyngula | June 16, 2010The good news, first: the Mormon church has been found guilty on 13 counts of lying about their involvement with California's proposition 8. Mormonism is now officially a faith of convicted liars.
Now the bad news, or more accurately, the pathetic news. The church lied about spending only $2078 on campaigning in California, when they'd actually raised over $30 million, but admitted to spending $190,000, and certainly spent much more than that to influence the election. The penalty for this ethics violation was…
$5538.
The lesson learned, I'm sure, is that when evil religious masterminds are…
pharyngula | June 15, 2010Nick Matzke has taken exception to my criticism of Mary Midgley, and has posted a rebuttal. Well, maybe. Probably not.
Eh, I've read most of Midgley's books and articles, I don't think you [The Unpublishable Philosopher] or PZ getting her at all.
The short version of what she's saying is that there is a lot more to life than simply scientifically assessing everything as if it was a hypothesis. The primary reason many people like their religion, despite its obvious problems from a scientific point of view, have to do with things like:
providing a sense of community
instilling values in…
gregladen | June 15, 2010Pat Robertson, others, claim that this is a sign from god telling us that Christianity is not the true religion.
Well, ok, Pat Robertson others, did not really say that. But they should, according to their modus operandi!
The Jesus Statue located in Monroe Ohio is known as Touchdown Jesus because of the figure's position. Touchdown Jesus formerly sat aside a highway since 2004. But not just any highway. The highway is I-75.
You do understand the significance of this, yes? Let me connect the dots for you.
There is no Isaiah 75, so we can't refer to a bible passage such as the one…
pharyngula | June 14, 2010The mullahs just have to meddle. They can't simply turn their televisions off, or not own a television — they have declared that anyone watching sports on television is un-Islamic, so now thugs wander about, beating up or killing anyone caught watching the World Cup.
Almost as crazy is the fact that some dedicated fans are still watching. I guess I can sympathize: what a world when watching football becomes an act of blasphemy. I know a few readers here are watching the games — it should give you a little more of a thrill to know that you are being blatantly un-Islamic to do so.
(via Science-…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2010tags: Atheism: In Your Own Words, The Thinking Atheist, atheism, humanism, rationalism, religion, cults, self delusion, fantasy life, wishful thinking, streaming video
Realizing that you are an atheist is a profound, personal experience. This video records the stories (in their own words) of some people who came to the realization that they are atheists.
pharyngula | June 11, 2010Bill Donohue was looking awfully silly demanding that the Empire State Building celebrate Mother Teresa's birthday, so I guess he needed a new cause. He found one. The Catholic League is outraged by Lady Gaga's new video.
Lady Gaga is playing Madonna copy cat, squirming around half-naked with half-naked guys, abusing Catholic symbols--they're always Catholic symbols--while bleating out "Alejandro" enough times to induce vomit. Dressed occasionally as a nun in a glossy-red habit, the Madonna wannabe flashes the cross, swallows a rosary and manages to get raped by her S&M boyfriends. Hence…
jrosenhouse | June 10, 2010Over the past few years I have asked a fair number of creationists what it is they find so objectionable about evolution. They have a great many complaints, but the one I hear most often is some version on the problem of evil. Evolution by natural selection is a cruel and wasteful process. It is not at all the sort of thing a just and loving God would set in motion.
They are hardly alone in thinking that. In his book Living With Darwin philosopher Phillip Kitcher wrote, referring to the evolutionary process:
There is nothing kindly or providential in any of this, and it seems…
drorzel | June 10, 2010The Science Channel debuted a new show last night, Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, with the premier apparently designed by committee to piss off as many Internet types as possible. The overall theme was "Is there a creator?" and it featured physicist-turned-Anglican-priest John Polkinghorne talking about fine-tuning but no atheist rebuttal. It spent a good ten minutes on Garrett Lisi and his E8 theory, making it sound a whole lot more complete than it is. And it got this aggressively stupid review in the Times:
Oh, let's face it: it was hard to concentrate on the first half of the…