religion
pharyngula | March 2, 2010Or you will be exterminated! You know, Texas has a reputation of being a nasty place full of particularly ignorant rednecks, which I don't blindly agree with — I know too many smart Texans, and it does have many good organizations, like the Texas Freedom Network — but this is a blight that smirches even that already sooty name. I am speaking of a vicious vigilante organization called Repent Amarillo. Look upon that link and quiver with disgust.
It's saturated with military imagery: men in uniform, humvees, helicopters, helmets; they compare themselves to special forces; they call themselves…
pharyngula | March 2, 2010…is that too often newspapers think you don't need a science journalist to write it. Any ol' hack will do. Take this article on evolution in the Vancouver Sun, which distills modern evolutionary biology into 12 theories, which happens to include Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy as well as Intelligent Design creationism — which, at least, is pairing intellectual equals. The author, Douglas Todd, is speaking High Crackbrain and making stuff up. It's all garbage from a buffoon who knows nothing about the field. What, you have to wonder, qualifies him to be writing on science?
Jerry Coyne has the…
terrasig | March 2, 2010Great news came across my RSS reader the other day that author and journalist, Chris Mooney, was among twelve journalists selected by the John Templeton Foundation for an intensive two-month fellowship on the relationship between science and religion. The Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion provide financial support for scholars to study at their home institution and engage with US and European scholars at the University of Cambridge UK to "promote a deeper understanding and more informed public discussion of this complex and rapidly evolving area of inquiry…
grrlscientist | February 28, 2010tags: Saturday Night Live, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, evolution, humor, funny, satire, television, I evolved from Jesus, streaming video
I think I need to ask you which religion believes we evolved from Jeebus .. any ideas? I am also interested to additional lyrics that you would provide this song with .. maybe our friend, Digital Cuttlefish, the bard of the intert00bz, can write a few verses for us?
pharyngula | February 28, 2010Sacrilege can get people killed. It can cause riots and economic mayhem. People die over a sense of offended propriety. And whose fault is that?
You know what I'm talking about. Almost all religions have odd proscriptions that are taken with extraordinary seriousness by their followers — they are markers for who belongs in the group, and who is the outsider. Violate them, especially if you knowingly violate them, immediately marks you as The Enemy, and justifies taking any action against you.
The Muslim outrage about cartoon portrayals of their prophet was a recent example. It's utterly…
grrlscientist | February 28, 2010tags: comedy, humor, funny, fucking hilarious, self parody, wingnuts, hate group, religion, cults, institutionalized mind-control, Westboro Baptist Church, streaming video
If this video doesn't scare you, then this piece of information might: this video is by the Westboro Baptist Church hate group of Topeka, Kansas. After you see the title of their homepage, I think you'll start wondering about these people and whether their "God is Love." This group of religious wingnuts and haters also enjoys protesting at pop concerts, Kansas City Chiefs football games, the funerals of soldiers and of…
grrlscientist | February 27, 2010tags: comedy, humor, funny, fucking hilarious, religion, cults, institutionalized mind-control, streaming video
The meaning of christiantiy -- in their own words. Rather damning, in my opinion.
neurophilosophy | February 27, 2010REMOVAL of specific parts of the brain can induce increases in a personality trait which predisposes people to spirituality, according to a new clinical study by Italian researchers. The new research, published earlier this month in the journal Neuron, provides evidence that some brain structures are associated with spiritual thinking and feelings, and hints at individual differences that might make some people more prone than others to spirituality.
Cosimo Urgesi of the University of Udine and his colleagues combined pre- and post-surgical personality assessments with advanced lesion…
pharyngula | February 27, 2010It's tough to tread that line between contempt and admiration: Jerry Coyne writes about the Templeton journalism awards. It really is a smart move on the part of the Templetonites to coopt journalists to sell their bankrupt line by tossing a good-sized chunk of money at them.
One interesting revelation is that the journalism awards aren't simply handed out by cunning Templetonistas who spot a promising compromiser in the ranks of reporters — you have to apply for the fellowship. Hey, should I? They're closed for now, but I imagine there will be a bunch of 2011 fellowships awarded, and I…
pharyngula | February 27, 2010Got problem kids? Man, when they hit those teenage years they all get rebellious and willful, and start thinking independently, and often start doing things their parents would rather they didn't. This is one of the tough responsibilities of being a parent — you have to be willing to let your children grow into independent human beings.
But let's say you never got that memo, and you think your job is to raise children who are just like you: insecure, a little bit angry, shackled tightly into a fearful belief system that says all human beings are evil. Independent thinking is the last thing…
pharyngula | February 26, 2010Hey, I just checked my mailbox for a fancy gilt envelope, but no joy. I was hoping to hear from the Pope.
The Pontifical Council for Culture has announced that it is creating a foundation to focus on relations with atheists and agnostics.
See? They should be calling me any minute now…oh, wait.
The president of the Council announced the initiative on Wednesday as a response to Pope Benedict's call to "renew dialogue with men and women who don't believe but want to move towards God."
Well, I'm out. That's like putting out a call for healthy men and women who want to move towards degenerative…
pharyngula | February 26, 2010You know, voodoo is a really ridiculous religion. Ritual magic, placating gods…but it's common and accepted in Haiti.
Here's another ridiculous religion: Christianity. It's got its own brand of ritual magic, and it's also all about placating one god. It's also common and accepted in Haiti.
I'm still not at all surprised that, when the followers of voodoo recently tried to practice their silly rites, evangelical Christians attacked the ceremony, throwing rocks. Yeah, religion really helps people get along. Now they're talking holy war.
I agree with my friend and colleague, The Supreme Servitor…
pharyngula | February 26, 2010Chris Mooney has just been named a Templeton Fellow in journalism.
It's perfect for him. Many sincere congratulations on the excellent career trajectory.
Abbie sees the bright side in all this.
pharyngula | February 25, 2010A lot of people don't like Lyndon Rush, the Christian zealot who also happens to be a bobsledder in the Olympics. I think he's wonderful. It's so helpful to have someone like him openly demonstrating that Christians are morons.*
You know there's no atheist in a foxhole, right? There's no atheist at the top of a bobsled run, either.
But there are atheists in the military. I don't know about any specific godless organizations dedicated to the plight of unbelievers in bobsleds — bobsledding is a rather trivial issue to focus on, anyway — but there probably are some. They're just smart enough to…
pharyngula | February 25, 2010The Canadian government is planning to help a fundamentalist Christian group, Youth for Christ, to proselytize. They've offered to contribute several million dollars to the construction of a youth center in downtown Winnipeg, which sounds like a wonderful, useful idea…except for the fact that the group building it has this as their mission:
To impact every young person in Canada with the person, work and teachings of Jesus Christ and discipling them into the Church.
They also openly admit to their plans:
Sharing the person of Christ with every young person within our target group in Canada (…
pharyngula | February 24, 2010Two suspects in a Texas church arson have been arrested. Unfortunately, guess what the most important fact in the presentation of the story is?
Investigators have seized books on demons and atheism as well as rifles and knives from in a home linked to one of the men charged with setting an east Texas church on fire and suspected in a string of similar blazes.
Jason Robert Bourque, 19, and Daniel George McAllister, 21, were arrested Sunday and charged with a single count of felony arson in the torching of the Dover Baptist Church near Tyler about 90 miles east of Dallas.
Right. Because…
pharyngula | February 24, 2010Cults are all about control, and small children must be very hard to control.
The leader of a religious cult was "outraged" when a 1-year-old boy did not say "Amen" before a meal and ordered her followers to deprive him of food and water until he died, a Baltimore prosecutor told jurors Monday.
Another horrifying detail: the mother of the boy went along with the punishment and watched him waste away…all because she wanted to be accepted as a member of the cult.
pharyngula | February 24, 2010Collins has a new book coming out, titled Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith. It's the same old drivel: CS Lewis, old chestnuts re-roasted on a dying fire, nature and science somehow testifying to the truth of faith, moral law, fine-tuning, the Big Bang, etc. Jerry Coyne says it just right:
Enough is enough. Collins is director of the NIH, and is using his office to argue publicly that scientific evidence—the Big Bang, the "Moral Law" and so forth—points to the existence of a God. That is blurring the lines between faith and science: exactly what I hoped he would not do when he took…
pharyngula | February 22, 2010About 20 clergy, representing the very best of Christian theology, of course, and various Republicans gathered in Virginia to protest the existence of Planned Parenthood—they want all state funding, about $35,000 a year, stopped. They claim that Planned Parenthood is an evil organization because it provides abortions (which I consider a necessary and brave service, given the violence of anti-choice lunatics) and contraceptives, ignoring the fact that they also provide reproductive health care for women. In a just and rational world, Planned Parenthood would be regarded as a heroic…
emjohnson | February 21, 2010
The creationists have done it again, first it was bananas and now it's peanut butter. It seems they do all of their heavy thinking while shopping for groceries. Ray Comfort saw mutant bananas forged through artificial selection as evidence of God's presence (little did he know that wild bananas are inedible to humans). Now creationists seem impressed that pasteurization works. If this is the sort of thing that can persuade people, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that so many in the United States aren't able to understand the science of climate change.