religion

Guess who has been the recipient of state funds for their superstition scam? Michele Bachmann and her husband! Bachmann and Associates, Inc., a counseling center that receives state funds and is owned by Rep. Michele Bachmann and her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, uses counseling methods steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, raising questions about its use of taxpayer money. Founded in 2003, Bachmann's clinic has taken in nearly $30,000 in state funds since 2007. Dr. Bachmann has said publicly that God heals people at his clinic and that Jesus Christ is the "Almighty Counselor." "We are…
It's like Bambi vs. Godzilla, except no one would consider Donohue cute and innocent. In an interview, Hawking talked about gods: "What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible." When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said…
Have a look at this interview with Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero. It contains a number of interesting nuggets, but this is the part that jumped out at me: Baer: Proselytizing atheists like Dawkins have carved out a niche within a largely religious public sphere. Would a less emotional, less evangelistic atheism be capable of maintaining even this degree of influence? Prothero: I feel quite certain that a less emotional and less evangelistic atheism would garner far more influence. Atheism has a brand problem. Lots of the people who do not believe in God refuse to…
Oh, how sweet. Something good is going to come out of the Gulf oil spill. While the ocean is poisoned, sea birds tremble and die, fish and marine invertebrates are suffocated, work crews labor to contain the spreading oil slick, rescue workers struggle to clean animals tarred with sludge, and BP (we hope) tries to throttle the ruptured pipe, devout Christians gather to stand around, hold hands, and mumble at the clouds. They must have worked very hard to come up with that kind of pointless time-waster. This is not a protest. It's not about belly-aching. This is an opportunity for people to…
We all know the Catholic Church has a serious public relations problem right now — they're hidebound, they're insensitive to the human needs of their congregations, and, well, sheltering an evil bunch of child-rapers that they shuttle about among unknowing parishes like a buggerymobile or a penis-on-wheels program doesn't help. You would think that someone would realize that maybe some substantial reform is in order, and they have—but it's not the kind of reform rational people might have imagined. Instead, the church is planning to crack the whip in Ireland and insist on more dogmatism.…
tags: Christopher Hitchens on The Ten Commandments, religion, cults, ethics, morals, catholicism, christians, Vanity Fair, streaming video In this streaming video, Christopher Hitchens deconstructs the ten commandments and then rewrites them so they actually are an ethical code and so they mean something for everyday life.
tags: The Thinking Atheist, Remember The Sabbath, Jewish faith, sabbath mode, oven, humor, funny, offbeat, streaming video When I lived in NYC, a fair number of my students were Jewish. I've always found the Jewish faith to be fascinating, especially the Jews' definition of how to keep the Sabbath. My students taught me a lot about the Sabbath and the philosophy behind "keeping it" and what the rules are regarding the keeping of the Sabbath (and yes, I had a hard time not laughing when they told me all these things -- in all seriousness!)
The Nation has published an extremely generous profile of the Templeton Foundation. I'm trying to be charitable about it, but there's little here that the Templeton itself will find objectionable — it's one more swoop of the brush in an effort to always whitewash the foundation as sober, sensible, and serious, instead of the nest of delusional religious apologists that it actually is…apologists with astounding quantities of money and a willingness to spend it freely to promote its superstitious agenda. For instance, it describes the founder, John Templeton, in terms that make him sound like a…
It's odd, but several of the major sex abuse cases involving the Catholic church involve deaf kids. I didn't understand why, until I heard this song. And now I have to get some q-tips and sulfuric acid and scrub out my ears. For a not-quite-so entertaining story, read this account of Father Oliver O'Grady, a despicable monster who committed all kinds of depravities. O'Grady has admitted abusing many children of various ages, boys and girls, and said he slept with two mothers to get access to their children. He was convicted of child sexual abuse in 1993 and spent seven years in prison. Now…
Oleg Savca is a boy in Moldova who had a deadly brain tumor, and was expected do die, because nobody in his area knew how to treat him. His mother, Zina Savca, was reduced to hoping for a miracle from god. Left alone, the tumor would put Oleg into a coma and ultimately kill him. What happened next Zina Savca can attribute only to divine intervention. Yes! He has been saved! Because the Savcas sacrificed all their livestock, burning the bones wrapped in fat on an altar, and god sent angels who lofted them all into the air and carried them to a strange, magical land where devout mystics with…
Last year I attended a paleontology conference in Cincinnati. While I was there I attended a session on science and religion, during which a parade of people trumpeted the warm relationship between the two. Predictably, there was much bashing of the New Atheists, with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Stenger all specifically called out by name. There was a lot of preening about how it is only clueless atheists who blur the lines between science and religion. This, remember, at a paleontology conference. The session consisted of a series of fifteen minute presentations with no Q and A's…
It occurs to me that I haven't written about this topic in quite a while, but a recent event makes me think that maybe now's the time to revisit this topic. I'm referring to Holocaust denial. Newer readers may not know that part of what got me involved in online discussions back in the late 1990s was Holocaust denial. Indeed, a lengthy post about how I discovered Holocaust denial was one of the earliest substantive posts on this blog, popping up a mere month after I started blogging, which just so happened to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. That post…
We have another flaming authoritarian cretin of inexplicable popularity here in Minnesota: Bradlee Dean. He runs an outfit called "You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries", which trundles about the region bringing the word of god and Bradlee Dean to kids. He actually gets into the schools, despite the fact that he's a hateful sectarian weirdo. The scam they run is to claim that they'll entertain kids with a rock concert and bring an anti-drug, anti-sex message…neatly omitting any mention of evangelical proselytizing. You might be wondering what "controversial issues" that aren't for the "…
After all, if the New Life church in Yorktown, Indiana can offer a course in the New Atheism, I must be qualified to discuss all the nuances and fluff and crazy beliefs of Christianity. I am most amused, though, by their choice of instructor. It's some fellow named Jim Spiegel, who derives his authority from having written a book about atheism. The title? The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. Yeah, he has credibility. I wonder if that guy who made Reefer Madness ever published a textbook on neuropharmacology…
Sean Carroll is miffed about a science-and-religion panel at the World Science Festival: The panelists include two scientists who are Templeton Prize winners -- Francisco Ayala and Paul Davies -- as well as two scholars of religion -- Elaine Pagels and Thupten Jinpa. Nothing in principle wrong with any of those people, but there is a somewhat obvious omission of a certain viewpoint: those of us who think that science and religion are not compatible. And there are a lot of us! Also, we're right. A panel like this does a true disservice to people who are curious about these questions and could…
We've got 'em. A St Cloud minister took out an ad: Oooh, it's the usual fear-mongering. I had to do a double-take when I saw Dennis Campbell's summary of the Islamic Strategy, though… Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs, and by supporting the gay agenda. …because when I think "gay friendly", I picture the Taliban. I'm also wondering if Pastor Campbell thinks that a good way to oppose the influence of immigrating Muslims would be to counterbalance it with more immigration from those Catholics south of the border.
Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation in data from a Daily Kos poll question on the origin of the universe: Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree (38 think it's more recent, the rest are undecided). I've said it before and I stand by it: conservative Republicanism is incompatible with science. But looking at the finer details tells us a lot. The only group - gender, race, or region - with anything like the Republicans'…
I'm realizing that perhaps in yesterday's post I took everyone's love and understanding of postmodern feminist theory for granted so I'm going to start a little series of posts that I think will slowly introduce some of the issues that I spend a lot of time thinking about and hope that other people will too. Today I'm going to jump right into it by posting the essay I wrote for a horrible class I took about science and religion called Belief Options for a Practicing Scientist. The assignment was to write a five page essay on what the best belief option for a scientist is and why. I think that…
In reverse order: 5.  David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists. "I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments. 4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes. A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails.  3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind   2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…
The Vatican is reaching out to atheists. They are creating a foundation called "The Courtyard of Gentiles" to encourage discussion between Catholics and the godly — I can hardly wait. Except, alas, it turns out their invitations are only going to a select few. But in an interview with the National Catholic Register, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, made it clear he would not be willing to give a platform to certain prominent atheists. The foundation, he said, would only be interested in "noble atheism or agnosticism, not the polemical kind…