1. Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Comment #76594 by Jeff Weskamp on October 6, 2007 at 11:49 am

The following section of the article brought two words to mind....

"Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's 'first lady' on the university's Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to 'underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.'"

...and those words are "booty call!"

2. Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Comment #76592 by Jeff Weskamp on October 6, 2007 at 11:45 am

The only thing that shocks me is that Lindsay Roberts is the one who has the interest in "underage males" and not Richard Roberts!

3. There Go The Dinosaurs

Comment #73941 by Jeff Weskamp on September 26, 2007 at 5:05 pm

Ah, those good old Chick tracts.... each one solid proof that Fundamentalist Christians are indeed living, breathing parodies of themselves! Here are a few of my "favorite" Chick Tracts:

Boo! (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp) -- Which tells us that Satan apparently can come to Earth in physical form and commit mass murders.

Dark Dungeons (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp) -- Apparently the Dungeons and Dragons game teachs kids how to cast REAL magic spells on people. That's just what Christians believed in the 14th Century...

Curse of Baphomet (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0093/0093_01.asp) -- Did you know that the Masonic Lodge and the Free Masons are Satanists? Did you know that God HATES all obelisks? And if you renounce Masonry, your sick kids will instantly recover!

4. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #73586 by Jeff Weskamp on September 25, 2007 at 11:16 am

"I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here," he said."

Academic Freedom is a very endangered in this country... And the Fundangelicals are working out to eradicate the last few traces remaining.

5. A problem for Israel's farmers: The seven-year hitch

Comment #73582 by Jeff Weskamp on September 25, 2007 at 11:07 am

I read in Gershom Gorenberg's book, "End of Days," about a group of rabbis trying to build an enclosed habitat that was several feet off the ground. The priest who performs the cleansing ritual using ashes of a cremated, completely red heifer must never, in his entire life, have walked over a grave. The rabbis were seeking parents who would raise their son inside the enclosed habitat, so he could be ceremonially pure enough to serve as a priest.

6. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #64017 by Jeff Weskamp on August 17, 2007 at 9:58 am

I think it's a great shame that the Testament of Solomon wasn't included in the Biblical Canon. It's actually pretty well-written, has lots of creepy demons in it, and Solomon has a cool magic ring that binds demons to his will. It's no more bizarre than Revelation.

The truly amusing part is, if the ToS was included in the Canon, liberal Biblical scholars would be busy seeking the "allegorical" truths of the book, and Evangelicals scholars would be justifying all the magical elements as being literal truth!

7. Convict sues God for broken contract

Comment #58594 by Jeff Weskamp on July 25, 2007 at 10:12 am

"What do they mean god has no address where they can serve him papers? Don't they know he lives in heaven? They'll just have to kill a good person, and have him tell god when he gets to heaven, that he's being sued. Simple. "

In ancient Thrace, this method of communicating with the Divine was supposedly practiced! The Thracians worshipped a god named Zalmoxis, and every year they sacrificed a man after telling him all the prayers and requests of his community, so he could serve as a kind of mailman to the god.

8. A force for good?

Comment #55789 by Jeff Weskamp on July 12, 2007 at 9:36 am

"God isn't a man in the sky who answers prayers and punishes people on a whim, nobody would be silly enough to believe in that would they?"

Uh, yes, Mr. Valley, there are millions of people in America who do indead believe in that sort of God! The millions of Left Behind books sold in America are proof of that. I don't know how many Christians believe in the abstract, metaphorical God who is just a warm, fuzzy feeling in your tummy, but I don't think they are very many.

People like Valley aren't Christians. They are Theraveda Buddhists in Christian drag. Reverend Spong was a similar problem. Sure, it would be nice if Christianity WERE a pleasant mixture of Theraveda Buddhism, secular humanism, and agnostic rationalism; the problem is that this in not what was being preached in the New Testament.