1. Fury at funeral songs ban

Comment #211565 by cowalker on July 16, 2008 at 7:05 am

As someone who recently lost a parent, and has seen the names of contemporaries too frequently for comfort in the obituaries, I've given more thought to the subject of funerals lately.

IMO the key question is: "For whose benefit is a funeral conducted?"

I know an elderly lady who takes a lot of comfort in going over the details of her funeral plans, making sure that everything is exactly the way she wants it. The truth is, we control our own funerals only through the good will of our survivors. And once we are dead, why should we care about anything except the effect of the funeral on our survivors? I abhor the idea of being prayed and ranted over by religionists. But if my husband and children were comforted by this? I don't know. Luckily they share my views of religion.

My mother's funeral was a rigid Catholic service that she wouldn't have particularly appreciated, but probably wouldn't have cared about since it comforted my father, whom she had always put front and center in her life. He has told me that he wants the exact same thing for himself, and I plan to honor his wishes.

As to why the churches tend to be so rigid, if they don't stand somewhat firm on liturgy, they will crumble even more rapidly than they already are. I think the liturgical changes of Vatican II were actually a huge tactical error on the part of the Catholic Church. Church members are usually too unsophisticated to understand the fine distinctions between infallibly pronounced "truths," Church law, and Natural law. A lot of laymen concluded that if meat on Friday and mass on Saturday instead of Sunday was OK, then so were lots of other things they wanted to do based on common sense. Such as contraception, masturbation, divorce and remarriage, etc.

But trying to be rigid now is shutting the proverbial barn door when the horse is already frolicking in the meadow.

2. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208654 by cowalker on July 11, 2008 at 5:53 am

My snail-mail letter:

Dear President Bruininks:

I read on Professor P.Z. Myers website that he is receiving hate mail because he pointed out the inappropriateness of the extreme reactions of a Catholic congregation on a Florida campus to an incident where a student left the Church without swallowing a host. He did this in his own pithy and entertaining style.

I'm sure you're aware of the important role Professor Myers plays in promoting the accurate teaching of evolution in American schools. Those of us who are not scientists enjoy reading his extremely accessible explanations of the science of evolution, and his entertaining take-downs of creationist pseudo science. I believe that the U.S.A desperately needs people who can communicate scientific ideas to the non-scientific community, and Professor Myers is an important figure who does this handily. If we are to remain leaders in research and technological development, we need people like Professor Myers, who can encourage youth to admire and emulate rational thought, to debunk irrational nonsense, and to choose careers in science.

His lively, humorous and challenging style is much appreciated by a worldwide audience. Clearly some do not share this admiration. I encourage you not to allow the absence of a sense of humor in some, and Bill Donohue's rabid desire for media attention, to influence you in evaluating his performance as a scientist and teacher.

Very truly yours,

3. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207167 by cowalker on July 9, 2008 at 9:06 am

Convinced that now, by God's grace, he would be able to vanquish the spiritual dragon, the Devil, just as he had felled the visible fiend, Saint Theodore returned to the camp, ready to confess his faith. When the commander of his cohort ordered a sacrifice to the gods of the Empire, Theodore remained in his tent. "I am a Christian," he told the squad who came to look for him. "I adore only Christ. He is the King whom I serve, and to Him only am I willing to offer sacrifice!" After plying him with crafty questions, they left him in order to interrogate other Christian soldiers. Inflamed with divine zeal, Theodore encouraged his fellow Christians to show themselves worthy of Christ, who had chosen them to be soldiers in His army on high.

That night he went to the pagan temple and reduced the altar of Rhea, the mother of the gods, to ashes. He was caught in the act by a verger, and brought unresisting to the governor Publius. There was an uproar in Euchaïta when the deed was known; but Theodore replied calmly to the governor's questions, showing the absurdity of regarding as a deity a lifeless piece of wood which had been reduced to ashes in a few moments.

http://www.goarch.org/en/special/listen_learn_share/theodoretyre/learn/index.asp

I think St. Theodore was on to something in his reasoning, but he sure was rude.

4. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207128 by cowalker on July 9, 2008 at 8:13 am

I suppose that nowadays Catholic missionaries don't immediately tell the objects of their conversion that their gods are fantasies who must give way to the Xtian God. They wouldn't deliberately desecrate objects sacred to the heathens. It wasn't always so, of course, which was why martyrdom was occasionally the alternative to retirement from being a missionary. If the Catholics have learned to be polite about other beliefs, should we be polite too, and equally persistent in our efforts to increase the numbers of secular humanists?

I was raised Catholic. I remember that in religion classes more than forty years ago we pre-adolescents enjoyed presenting the priest with disgusting what-if situations involving the host, because we knew he would have to say the priest would be required to eat it. (You must be post Vatican II, phatbat (119-Comment 207064), and gotten the kinder, gentler version of Catholic education, or you would have known what a dreadful sin it was not to swallow.) In our innocence, we never thought of the scenario described by Brian English, 64-Comment 206962, where the host ends up in a toilet mixed with some of last night's beer.

phatbat also asks:

I also think that if he had managed to get away with the cracker uneaten without anyone noticing then would anything wrong really have taken place? I don't think it would since it isn't actually anything other than a wafer.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to get away unnoticed with the wafer. You would receive in your hand, pretend to put it in your mouth and palm it instead. If you didn't act weird, no one would be watching you closely. Go back to the pew and kneel. Slip it into a tissue while you pretend to pray, but also need to cough gently. It would be easy to provide Pharyngula with consecrated hosts. Once upon a time, when people in parishes mostly knew each other, a stranger would have been scrutinized for many reasons. Our anonymous urban lives changed all that. How could anyone know whether this takes place hundreds of times year if the cracker confiscators keep it secret?

It is that vulnerability that makes me think it was a huge mistake for the Church to react in overdrive to this incident. They would have been smarter to let him go quietly, maybe schedule a special mass of penance, and not make his name public but issue a plea for the private return of the wafer with a more sad than angry demeanour. The imp of the perverse is incited by the hysteria of the reaction, and the internet inspires videotapable mischief. And how would viewers know whether the white disc on Youtube was really a consecrated host anyway? To paraphrase phatbat: If someone posts a video of a racoon eating a dry, flat circle of bread, and a voiceover says it's a consecrated host, but it's really not, would anything wrong be taking place? Since the offense through rational eyes is discourtesy to others rather than blasphemy, it would be just as bad. I guess not knowing for sure would drive some Catholics batshit crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if there were already videos of Black Masses using hosts already out there. (I'm not going to go looking, since the sites are likely to be the virus-infested kind.) But they have a right to practice their religion, so that makes it OK for them, doesn't it?

Wow. The world of the God-bothered is better understood under the influence of something psychoactive.

5. A trip to the Creation Museum

Comment #206853 by cowalker on July 8, 2008 at 10:25 pm

Another visit to the Creationist Museum.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalzi/sets/72157603091357751/

6. McDonald's Makes Jesus Cry

Comment #206436 by cowalker on July 8, 2008 at 11:15 am

"Maybe there are enough homos around to keep your arches open."

Is it just me or is there a way to read this as something other than serious criticism of McDonald's?

7. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203246 by cowalker on July 2, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Can't British papers just print the headline "Muslims Outraged" at the top of every issue and consider the subject covered?

8. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #202958 by cowalker on July 2, 2008 at 7:16 am

Shorter Rossmeier: "What people need is more cognitive dissonance."

9. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #201740 by cowalker on June 30, 2008 at 7:54 am

This is merely a sad commentary on the ignorance of newsmen, who seem not to know the noble role the Jesuits have always played in the history of higher education, or what the role her handmaiden science fills in relation to the Church.

Because I was hostile to religion, and believed, all too gullibly, every slander that could be voiced against it, I had convinced myself that religion was fundamentally irrational, an enemy of progress, and something fundamentally antithetical to the modern world-view in which all science fiction stories take place.

Wright makes a good point here, but it's not the point he thinks he's making.

Cartomancer nails it in comment #201569.

What makes catholics so keen on reason? Easy - up until about the fifteenth century it seemed to support most of what they were saying.

Catholics (and those who believe other religions) are not necessarily stupid, or irrational, in other areas of their lives. Atheists like Wright, who apparently took the stupid/irrational stereotype as an article of faith, are thrown off balance when they encounter a successful, charming, gifted believer who can talk cleverly about his/her religion. Throw in a little flattery of the atheist's honesty, a little criticism of the unquestioning believer and sympathy for occasional doubts, and a needy atheist may be sucked right into conversion.

When reason stopped supporting religion around the time of the Renaissance, Catholics and other Christians didn't stop progressing in science and other intellectual fields. They simply accepted dissonance between their day to day activities and their "spiritual" lives. They decided to think about religion differently from any other thing they thought about in order to keep the fantasy alive.

Logicel perceptively observed in comment #201623,that "Catholics use reason like the way the Mafia uses honor, in a very special way."
It's almost like a parlor trick the way Catholics posit a set of slippery assumptions, and then make a big show of unassailibly "reasoning" their way to a belief that contraceptives are bad but the rhythm method is OK. It can impress those who have been led to believe that all believers are mouth-breathing creationists who never read a book.

Here's the proof I want to hear from Catholics, BTW. Why are contraceptives bad but saccharine and aspartame are OK? It's OK to fool your tongue but not your genitals?

10. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #201721 by cowalker on June 30, 2008 at 7:15 am

The Magisterium of the Church has yet to rule on the theological implications of intelligent extraterrestrials.

I think the first order of business will be to put Catholic scientists to work on figuring out how alien reproduction works so the Church can figure out what is sinful about it. It's going to be complicated if they're hermaphrodites or gender-shifters. Whatever the aliens do, if it pleasures them, it'll be pretty safe to hedge it with complex rules and guilt and harness that energy to power the Church. The other problem will be figuring out which aliens (the "female" ones) aren't enough like Jesus to be priests.

If it turns out the aliens are androgynous and reproduce asexually, the Catholic hierarchy will be very sad.

11. Stop distorting young minds!

Comment #200267 by cowalker on June 27, 2008 at 8:07 am

irate_atheist said:
"I hope your kids give you as hard a time as I gave my parents over pulling this kind of shit on them. You deserve every kind of abuse they can throw at you."

Well, actually, we are on very good terms with both the grandparents and our grown children, and they are on good terms with each other. In fact, my kids are glad that they have a little insight into all the believers they inevitably encounter at college and in the work place. They will never be swept off their feet by the fervor of a religious believer, or surprised to encounter a "new" (to them) idea about spirituality.

I never pretended to believe, to my children or my parents. I agreed to expose my children to the culture, and I did. I doubt my kids are much worse off for having lost an hour of cartoons every week between the ages of five and eight. If they are, I'll just have to bear the guilt. We spent a small fortune to send them to a good private, secular school, so you might say we made it up to them.

The grandparents have become less anxious about family members being Catholics during the past twenty years. In part this is due to the molestation scandals. In part it's because most Americans have lost touch with the Church's intolerant policies. They assume (wrongly) that Church teaching and the hierarchy have acquired more common sense and gotten more tolerant as American Catholics have gotten more lax. But since they don't actually read about religion and priests aren't anxious to rock the boat with sermons against contraception, no one is the wiser. The main reason they're less anxious is that they've seen the sons, daughters, grandsons and grandaughters of their Catholic friends get divorced and remarried, come out of the closet, join other religions, have illegitimate children and limit their family size and the sky has not fallen. The drifting, if not fallen away Catholic has become the norm.

Believe me, I understand your anger. I felt it for years. I was sent to Catholic school for 12 years, and experienced all the crazy nuns and angry WWII veteran priests you've heard about, or experienced yourself. I was forced to attend Sunday mass during that time. My parents thought they were saving my soul. It backfired big time. I'm pretty much over the anger now. I didn't see much to be gained by trying to pass the anger on to my kids. Much better, in my opinion, to stay cool, thoughtful and open-minded.

12. Stop distorting young minds!

Comment #200097 by cowalker on June 26, 2008 at 9:34 pm

Don't worry, LucasWB. Your kids will tend to do what you do. I took my kids to Sunday School, telling them that although I did not believe what was taught, their grandparents did, and I wanted them to be familiar with their grandparents' belief. I told them it was important to their grandparents that they make their First Communion, and that we would do this for them. After that, they could decide for themselves whether they would go to church or Sunday school anymore. They were both ecstatic at the age of eight when they got to sleep in on Sunday mornings. I told them what I believed (which is that religion is a fantasy that helps people cope with fear and injustice) and that they would figure out what they believed for themselves as they grew up. I told them I would always love them no matter what view they took on religion. We talked about various religions as they grew up. I listened to them and never made fun of ideas they had about the world. I simply helped them find out facts when necessary, and was honest about my opinions.

They are now young adults who are atheists. I suspect that without early brainwashing to create guilt and fear, the obligations imposed by religion are very unattractive.

I think your approach of reading them stories from the Bible as fiction is an excellent idea. If I were you, I'd read them stories from Greek and Roman mythology, and perhaps some Native American creation stories, and stories about Indian gods and Mohammed. I'd make it clear that I enjoyed all of them as fiction.

13. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #196405 by cowalker on June 19, 2008 at 9:57 pm

My long, thoughtful response to Clearthinker took too long, and I forgot and clicked "Submit" before saving it and it went away to a parallel universe. Now that we don't have preview, I can't even use "Back" to get back to it.

Sob.

Instead you get this:

Prophecy

He always knew it would end in tears,
Yet He issued sharp scissors to His tots.
As each eyeball pops, He sighs "Free will, dears,"
Jaded God who always gets what He wots.

14. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #182714 by cowalker on May 20, 2008 at 10:34 pm

Sheesh. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to shoot up a Koran and carry a sign saying Scientology is so a Cult-culty-culty-uber-culty CULT!

Religionists don't grasp the concept of the Imp of the Perverse, do they?

15. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #179850 by cowalker on May 13, 2008 at 9:51 pm

I have to admit that Brooks is probably right about one thing. Most people are going to misunderstand the science in exactly the same way he does.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Brooks just makes the assumption that what he calls universal "moral intuitions" have a supernatural origin rather than being explicable as valuable behaviors that contributed to human survival in communities.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

That's a real mess of babble. He actually describes the physical origin of the "feeling" of transcendance (loss of orientation in space) and then leaps to the conclusion that the disoriented mind is merging with a larger presence because that's how it "feels." He concludes that scientists have respect for this "feeling" as a "spiritual" experience (which by definition is independent of the physical brain they are observing.) Whaaa???

But of course lots of people will react the same way. "See, you can see that part of my brain--the spiritual part--light up when I meditate. That proves I really did have an out of the body experience."

Yep. And you and your dog ruled Egypt together, back in the day.

16. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #179844 by cowalker on May 13, 2008 at 9:36 pm

When we meet the extraterrestrials, you know what's going to drive them crazy--trying to figure out which ones have the proper genitalia for ordination. What if they have three or more genders? What if they're all hermaphrodites? What if they reproduce asexually? What if they are different genders at different times in their lives?

Wow. What a conundrum. How can they tell which ones have the alien equivalent of a penis so they know which ones Jesus thought were good enough to be priests?

17. Pope's Views on Science Invoke Spirited Debate

Comment #165298 by cowalker on April 21, 2008 at 10:03 am

"Yet if reason … becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Hindu faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life," he wrote.

"Yet if reason … becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Muslim faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life," he wrote.

"Yet if reason … becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Druid faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life," he wrote.

"Yet if reason … becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Quetzalcoatl's faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life," he wrote.

Yeah. Whatever.

18. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165255 by cowalker on April 21, 2008 at 9:09 am

Crystal:

You know cowalker when I was a Christian I realized much of the stuff in the bible was horrible so I thought I had seen the worst. But going back over it there seems to be a lot of rotten stuff that I missed or had forgotten. I think many Christians ( who are better Christians then I was ) can read the bible and tune out all the bad and stupid parts. The bad parts just dont compute.

Crystal, I think you are quite right that people used to tune out the bad and stupid parts. However I think nowadays Christians just aren't reading much of the Bible, period. The kids watch "Bible-based" cartoons that cherry-pick the cool stories and adults read self-help and inspirational books by Christian writers who insert only the scriptures that support their message. An awful lot of Americans who call themselves "Christians" don't attend a church or send their kids to Sunday school, and they certainly don't read the Bible.

There was a TV interview done by Stephen Colbert where he asked a "Christian" Congressional representative who was agitating to have the ten commandments displayed in a courtroom to name some of the commandments. I forget how many he could name but it was only two or three. These people are awfully ignorant of what they say they believe in.

19. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165161 by cowalker on April 21, 2008 at 6:34 am

The Christian paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation's educational decline, but it probably doesn't matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture.

Re Richard Dawkins' characterization of the Old Testament God: most Americans wouldn't recognize OT God if he pranced by them dripping the blood of the Philistines and shouting condemnation of them for wearing cotton/polyester blend slacks. Nor would they listen to this gibbering apparition when he exhorted them to impregnate a brother's widow posthaste. I suppose they would be tempted to execute Miss Cleo, but most would think it a bit extreme.

Bozos like Bozell are preaching to a choir that is mostly ignorant of their own scriptures. This ignorance undoubtedly helps to prolong the Christian religion's influence. If preachers and priests want followers, they're best advised to de-emphasize the Old Testament except for the neat little visually appealing stories about Adam and Eve, Noah and his Ark, David and Goliath, Joseph and his Brothers and Moses.

20. Inadequate, private and late apology with grotesquely inadequate excuse

Comment #159285 by cowalker on April 11, 2008 at 9:22 pm

I suppose the person who murdered the unfortunate student was having a bad day too. Rob Sherman was lucky Davis was able to restrain herself from using a firearm.

Politicians can have bad days, and spout bigotry, but it will influence their constituents. We don't have the freedom to say stupid, intolerant things without experiencing being thought stupid and intolerant.

The problem is, part of a politician's job is to uphold the Constitution, which does not recognize a religious requirement for citizenship and participation in government. She completely ignored that part of her job. SHE WASN'T DOING HER JOB THAT NIGHT.

If I were a constituent of hers, I'd want to be very sure that she recognized her failure and publicly resolved not to make that kind of mistake again. An apology privately whispered into the ear of one atheist does not scream recognition of error, remorse and a firm purpose to change her perspective about nonreligious U.S. citizens.

21. Rep. Davis: The Worst Person in the World

Comment #157628 by cowalker on April 9, 2008 at 10:56 am

The part where she said it's dangerous for children to even know about atheism is an irresistible reminder of the quasi-Mormon cult being investigated in Texas after allegations of child abuse. The poor, deluded women and children looked like extras from "Little House on the Prairie" as they evacuated the compound. I suppose they imagine they're dressing like 19th century pioneers, but they're clearly wearing Simplicity creations based on looking "old-fashioned."

For more than two generations the children of the cult have been isolated from modern America and taught that everyone outside the compound is an evil predator. They know of no other way of life than the forced marriage of young girls to the most powerful older men in the group. It would certainly be "dangerous" to the cult for the youth to know about other philosophies of life, because when they compared them to their cult's practices, the latter would look pretty sick.

What a fearful, narrow mindset Davis's sentiments betray. She obviously has no confidence in the strength of her own beliefs.

22. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #154518 by cowalker on April 3, 2008 at 11:48 am

ThoughtsonCommonToad:

Yeah homosexuality is more dangerous than terrorism.

Didn't you hear that four homosexual couples planned to have sex at an airport hotel in New York, to create sensual pleasure on a scale approximately equal to the pleasure created by four heterosexual couples in that hotel on the same night? Doesn't that send your Scare Meter into the Unprecedented zone?

23. Supreme Court to consider Ten Commandments vs. 'Seven Aphorisms'

Comment #153342 by cowalker on April 1, 2008 at 12:05 pm

It will be rather fun in the parks to watch the Christian parents explaining the blessing "May the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with his noodly appendage" and the significance of the upside down pentacle to their wee ones.

24. My quest to get de-baptised

Comment #152705 by cowalker on March 31, 2008 at 11:32 am

LeeC

I've not baptized my son (2 1/2 years old) but the mother-in-law wants it done (however, being the other side of the globe works wonders in causing a delay)

The problem is, she is planning to get it done at her local church (CoE) the next time we are back to England. Since it isn't costing me any money I have not said no but if it helps in the stats on the religious I may have to put my foot down.

Try calling the vicar privately beforehand and tell him that you have no intention of raising your son in the church. If he's still willing to go through with it, you have confirmed how little the ceremony means. It is a mere social exercise, like pretending to great grandma that your twenty-five-year-old is still a virgin rather than living with his/her significant other. A Catholic priest would not perform a baptism under these circumstances. If the CoE is willing to take all the meaning out of the exercise, I wouldn't see any reason to be more conscientious than they.

As far as the "de-baptizing" concept, baptismal and marriage records in churches are historical records. I really doubt whether churches go back and "erase" or annotate the record of a church wedding when a couple is divorced. It's doubtful they would be notified. No one would assume church records were still accurate indicators of a couples' current status. Only government records would (if there were no changes in citizenship) have the current legal status of a couple--a marriage record and a divorce record if apropos.

I would think that one's current religious status would only be recorded if one were a member of a parish. I hope that's what is counted when a religion claims a certain number of members. Or the claim could be based on polls of some sort. But there may be countries where the religious population is based on the number of people baptized. Of course it would be highly inaccurate considering how people change religions and quit practicing religion.

25. I always aim to misbehave

Comment #152378 by cowalker on March 30, 2008 at 9:37 pm

Are they effing kidding about Darwin's theory of natural selection and its function in evolution producing Hitler and the Holocaust?

Didn't the extremely "intelligent" Ben Stein study any Western history, ever?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism

26. New Atheists Are Not Great

Comment #145218 by cowalker on March 17, 2008 at 11:27 am

Y'know I find this has been more of a bug than a feature.

Moral laws have changed less over the millennia than the recognized laws of physics and mathematics.

Religion isn't much help when it comes to questions like whether one should fight for one's country. Quakers, Mennonites, and Buddhists are as certain of their spiritual truths as the Muslims, Jews, Protestants and Catholics who happily kill at the behest of their political leaders. The pope, by the way, has declared the Iraq War to be immoral, but you don't hear any demands from U.S. Catholics for priests to refuse communion to soldiers in uniform or to excommunicate politicians who fund the war, whereas there's a small but noisy group of American Catholics who are always demanding those punishments for pro-choice Catholics.

There were Christians for and against slavery in the U.S., both quoting scripture to support their moral stand. The same was true of the women's suffrage cause. Inevitably there were Christians on the winning side, since there were Christians on BOTH sides.

Opposition to the destruction of the environment has developed independently of religion, although now some religious people are rushing to say that God was an environmentalist all along. The churches haven't exactly been out in front condemning the exploitation of the poor by the very rich, in spite of Johnnie-come-lately-Ratzinger's showcasing of the "new" sins.

Is it OK with God if I work on creating deadly diseases because that's my job at the government lab and I need to earn a living? What about investing my money in corporations that are helping the government to do this? Can I invest in the corporation that's destroying old growth forests? How much effort do I have to put into investigating what corporations own the "bad" corporations so I can avoid them?

Because religious moral law has been pretty much frozen to mean "Thou shalt not screw unless married to each other," religious moral law is about as useful to modern people as a whalebone corset is to a modern woman.

27. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #143565 by cowalker on March 14, 2008 at 7:55 am

Ygern:

I can't help but think this [trend toward intolerance and bigotry] will push a lot of Catholics (clergy & lay people) AWAY from the Church as they come to realise that they cannot align themselves with this anymore.

I'm waiting to see if my theory proves true. I theorize that Ratzinger's leadership will drive away most of the Catholic women in America who have been hanging around and waiting to be recognized as equally deserving of ordination. That would mean they could become part of the hierarchy of authority in the church. (Why they are obsessed with joining this "Girls Have Cooties Club" I can't say.)

I theorize that the supernaturally-addicted females still in the Catholic Churce will turn to churches that have come a little farther along the path that recognizes women as human beings. Women have always been the stalwarts of the Catholic Church, even though they couldn't get any official power. They dragged husbands to Church, encouraged sons to become priests and blackmailed grown children into at least the appearance of piety. Even now, some parishes use nuns to conduct Sunday prayer services, due to the scarcity of priests, but the nun is officially considered to provide a product inferior to the priest's holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She will probably retaliate slyly to this lack of respect by referring to God using female pronouns.

How many masochists remain, and how long will they stay? But the Church is preparing for this by going for immigrants in America and expanding its mission to the Third World. Once the uneducated catch on, I don't know what Plan C is.

28. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143508 by cowalker on March 14, 2008 at 7:09 am

The bishop, who has previously spoken out against the Labour government's support for civil partnerships, said the "lobby" was "ever present" at services for Holocaust Memorial Day. "The impression is that they have been equally persecuted," he said.

I had no idea that it was not only illegal for Jewish people to marry in Scotland, but there was no civil partnership arrangement they could turn to either.

Who among us wouldn't sleep sounder at night knowing that Sir Ian McKellen was behind bars? If he weren't available to mastermind the gay plot against the Catholic Church, the gays would only have the 10% to 58% of the priests in the church who are gay to rely on to conspire against themselves.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_rcc1.htm

29. Oklahoma: One Step from Doom

Comment #141158 by cowalker on March 10, 2008 at 6:16 am

I wonder if the teacher could get around this by wording the question as:

According to the text "xxx," the earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. Give three examples of evidence cited in the text to support this conclusion.

As others have remarked, atheists in a theology class would be required to demonstrate knowledge of what was in the Bible, or Koran, or Torah, etc., in order to pass.

There's no reason a student in science class shouldn't be required to demonstrate familiarity with the material in the text used in class, whether they agree with it or not.

30. How to abandon your God

Comment #139450 by cowalker on March 5, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Rod-the-farmer:

I bet the Catholic Church was either aware of this trend through their own observations, or is trying to develop a strategy to deal with it now this survey has come out. But from my observations, the decline is almost totally due to general disgust with the number of child abuse cases laid at the feet of RC priests. How they will respond to this will be interesting to watch.

As a one time Catholic who keeps in touch through family and publications, sometimes I get the feeling the American Catholic Church is just phoning it in. I think the Vatican has pretty much given up on traditional Europe (even Italy and Ireland!) and native American Catholics, and turned its attention to the possibilities of immigrants and the citizens of Third World nations in Africa and Asia.

In America there is a small group of Catholics who consider themselves "traditional" who are constantly nagging the bishops and the pope to enforce Church law in their parishes. They want thunderous denunciations of contraception from the pulpit on Sunday. They want public condemnation of movies and TV shows and books. They want politicians who aren't constantly trying to get abortion made illegal to be publicly refused Communion. Instead they get tolerance and nuns who speak at Mass about meditations on god's feminine side based on walking the labyrinth.

I had a theory back in the seventies that if the pope after John Paul II didn't show more enlightened attitudes toward sex and contraception, and didn't put things in motion to start women on the path to the priesthood that Americans would really start leaving the Catholic Church. Or more accurately, the people who always bolstered Church membership by pushing children and husbands to participate would lose interest.

I'm one of the sixties/seventies feminists, and many women of my generation had the idea that the priesthood was some kind of prize. Some of them are still waiting for ordination, having gotten the education required. I rather suspect that their daughters and nieces and granddaughters no longer focus on the priesthood as a wondrous honor, no doubt due in part to the scandals you mention.

31. Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai

Comment #138426 by cowalker on March 4, 2008 at 9:44 am

Professor Shanon is a piker. Here's the real story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/africa/03exodus.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1176004800&en=b2ca3fabefdec328&ei=5087&oref=slogin

In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses.

But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. Books have been written on the topic, but the discussion has, for the most part, remained low-key as the empirically minded have tried not to incite the spiritually minded.

"Sometimes as archaeologists we have to say that never happened because there is no historical evidence," Dr. Hawass said, as he led the journalists across a rutted field of stiff and rocky sand.

Whatever you do, don't incide the spiritually minded. They might kill you.

32. Fleas on the Horizon: In Defense of God

Comment #138294 by cowalker on March 4, 2008 at 7:00 am

Vadjong:

Richard (among many others) provides his own broadest possible spectrum of what would be considered a divine entity (from Stone Age 'bolt tossing sky daddy' to New Age 'some form of cosmic energy') and then pulls the rug lengthwise and sideways. AND STILL they claim their God is not flying on this carpet. So they are asked to explain. They twist the emperor's knickers subtly and the whole cycle starts again.

You nailed it. And your description of the cycle demonstrates exactly why Anfuso at Free Press is wrong to say:

"You have to examine these books much closer now, sales-wise, because there are so many. It's a topic that will continue, but it can't sustain these huge sales. It's not going to become perennial, like diet books."

The wave made by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris will subside, leaving more folks washed up on the beach of skepticism than there were before. But it's hard to do without Sky Daddy and the Heavenly Rewards when you're used to turning to them like a pacifier or favorite blanket, just as it's hard to accept that the only way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more. (The Magic Mango and Moussakka diet sounds much more interesting.) So there will be a wave of books dedicated to drawing the skeptics back into the comfy shallows of belief. And some will succumb.

Repeat the cycle to the delight of publishers.

But given the propensity of American consumers to keep going back to the religious buffet to try something new I don't expect to see much of the old intensity of belief that led to the practice of uncomfortable "virtues" like obedience to clergy.

33. Please Call Earth. We Still Haven't Found You.

Comment #137712 by cowalker on March 3, 2008 at 11:32 am

Fiziker: "If that life is intelligent, the theologians are going to have a hard time coming up with a rationalization for the absence of a reptilian Jesus (although they've faced of worse)."

I always figured what would drive the Roman Catholic hierarchy nuts would be figuring out which aliens could be priests (males only) and which aliens could have sex with each other or humans, if the aliens weren't clearly male and female just like we are.

Because it's pretty clear to me that the Catholic clergy are a lot more obsessed with sex (gay sex, the gender of the clergy, abortion and contraception) than peripheral matters like salvation or social justice.

If any aliens turn up, there will be quite the task force at the Vatican analyzing alien genitalia and reproduction before they worry about "saving" them

34. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132837 by cowalker on February 25, 2008 at 9:13 am

Now Dawkins will object that he, unlike the religious believer, is committed to the methods of "science," and will therefore change his mind when evidence refuting his beliefs appears â€" but it just so happens none ever has.

The striking naivete of this viewpoint becomes clear if one asks a simple question: What, for Dawkins, would constitute evidence of God's existence? Suppose an angel of the Lord were to appear before Dawkins, even as he was delivering another lecture on the delusion that God exists. Would such an experience change Dawkins' views?

Well, I don't presume to know what would constitute evidence of God's existence for Dawkins. But I know who DOES know, if he/she/it exists, and that is--GOD!!!

The omniscient, omnipotent Creator, Who exists outside of time and space, could not fail to know EXACTLY what would convince Richard Dawkins that there was a God. Assuming the existence of supernatural powers, there is some event or experience that would utterly confound Dawkins' view that the universe can be explained without resorting to supernatural explanations.

But God won't cause this event.

And here is the explanation given by Christians as to why. Presenting this evidence would take away Dawkins' free will to reject belief in God. Ideally people pick up on hints in ancient scriptures and listen to the right teachers and virtuously CHOOSE to believe. There wouldn't be any virtue in religious belief if it were as obvious as believing that jumping off a tenth floor balcony would result in your smashed body on the pavement below. EVERYBODY knows that.

Now just don't bring up St. Paul and the road to Damascus, or questions about whether it would be fair for a parent to punish a child for failing to pick up on hints that some believe one shouldn't hit one's little brother in the head with a hammer, although admittedly there is a confusing range of opinions on the subject.

35. Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer

Comment #130437 by cowalker on February 20, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Good for Ehrman. He had a LOT invested in belief. He would have been better off materially I'm sure, if he'd pretended to continue believing.

It took me a long time to realize that the usual arguments (most suffering is caused by humans misusing their free will or suffering makes us better people) didn't begin to scratch the surface of the problem. If we can expand our compassion one degree beyond our own species, it's obvious that suffering is built into "the circle of life" as the Disney cartoon would have it. Most creatures survive by devouring each other alive, or serve to feed other creatures by being devoured alive. Many of these creatures are sentient, experiencing fear, loneliness and physical pain. In addition, these creatures suffer disease, birth defects and old age, just like humans. You can't argue that any of this suffering is due to their free will or that it will purify their souls. Even if you buy the Garden of Eden story, it's obvious that carnivorous creatures were never herbivores. They didn't have the digestive organs or teeth for it.

What kind of God designs such a "circle of life?" Not a kind one. In fact, the world looks far more likely to be the product of amoral cause and effect.

36. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126066 by cowalker on February 12, 2008 at 12:40 pm

I could pass my entire lifetime in indifference to a 6th century leader of Arabian tribes who used religion to gain power and wealth. When I hear stories like this, the imp of the perverse makes me imagine him in the most scurrilous and degrading terms, merely to spite those who would murder over a cartoon. They really don't get it that you can't inspire respect with disproportionate violence, do they?

37. Blasphemy

Comment #122573 by cowalker on February 5, 2008 at 1:47 pm

HughCaldwell: "Stepping up, in Muslim countries, could mean stepping up to the gallows to be hung by the neck until dead or being done to death by a do-gooder."

Too true. But Dr. Dennet is criticizing people who live in the West, both Muslim and non-Muslim, for not speaking out against this medieval violence committed against freedom of speech in the name of religion. He is saying that when we "respect" the right of Muslim countries to follow sharia laws that are outdated and barbarous, we are failing in our responsibility to improve human rights globally. Either through cowardice or exaggerated sensitivity to the "sacred," we don't challenge practices rooted in religious faith. I'd say it's a bit of both.

38. Admitting that you have no religion is not politically correct

Comment #122035 by cowalker on February 4, 2008 at 2:22 pm

http://www.wlu.ca/page.php?grp_id=965

I know that the link above refers to sexual diversity rather than diversity in regard to religious belief. However the powerful drive to be accepting of all different types of people that has affected many campuses can lead into a rather painful situation where one loses the right to disagree with anyone about anything.

I think the people who rejected the application are confusing the commendable goal of providing a safe, harrassment-free environment for learning, and the goal of discussing differences of opinion. Certainly the free thinkers wouldn't be allowed to demonstrate against religious activities. That would be threatening to religious students. But it is a curtailment of academic freedom to forbid a club to promote a religion-free way of life.

39. Heath Ledger Death: Baptist Group To Protest At Memorial

Comment #115577 by cowalker on January 24, 2008 at 11:03 am

The only thing these guys are sincere about is wanting to be celebrities by the only means available to them--being publicly obnoxious beyond belief.

I wish the media would quit giving them any more exposure than one sentence that would say: "There was a brief disruption at a memorial service in XXXXX cemetery yesterday."

If these disgusting excuses for human beings demonstrated with a message of racial hate, would the TV and press be so quick to help them publicize their supposed belief? I don't think so, on the valid basis that it could encourage morons to commit hate crimes. But the media has no qualms about handing these creeps a big, big megaphone, rewarding them with attention for bad behavior.

Couldn't a Baptist congregation sue them or something for calling themselves "Baptists" when the term "Psychopaths" fits much better?

40. Death Sentence for Afghan Student

Comment #115423 by cowalker on January 24, 2008 at 7:21 am

As others have pointed out before, Muslims are more sensitive to perceived insults to Mohammed than insults to Allah.

As prophets go, to me Mohammed seems most like Joseph Smith, who also received revelations that livened up his sex life. However it appears that Mohammed received more just-in-time heavenly words that settled trivial problems like squabbling wives to his own satisfaction.

One might think that a Supreme Being would have better things to do than referee human spats, but Christians insist that His eye is on the sparrow. Of course that doesn't stop it from falling to the ground. Like Chauncey Gardner, God likes to watch, and receives the same admiration and affection for doing so.

41. Vatican slams California firm's cloning experiments

Comment #114124 by cowalker on January 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm

42nd said:

And I really don't see what is Vatican complaining about, since they abolished limbo, all those embryos are going straight to heaven anyway.

Just to be safe they could squeeze off a drop of sterile water into each petri dish and say "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." Bingo. Instant heaven for the blastocysts/embryos/fetuses when they perish.

Actually it would be lot more efficient at packing heaven than sending missionaries out.

42. George Scales, War Hero and Generous Friend of RDFRS

Comment #111863 by cowalker on January 15, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Thank you so much. You will never know, and neither will anyone else, how many people you have influenced by making it a respectable choice to reject theocracy.

You see, the numbers make so much difference for so many people.

The next step: Encourage people to judge ideas and literature on their merits.

43. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106622 by cowalker on January 3, 2008 at 7:54 am

BigC:

"Doubt is the cornerstone of faith". No, lack of doubt is the cornerstone of faith. Logical doubt is the cornerstone of skepticism.

I suppose it's meant to be a clever irony. Too bad it doesn't make any more sense than:

Promiscuity is the bedrock of chastity.

Theft is the load-bearing wall of the edifice of honesty.

You are never so truthful as when you tell a lie.

True communication requires you to ignore the actual meaning of your words. (That has been the motto of the Bush Administration.)

Level the forest
To save the trees,
Allow pollution
To cleanse the breeze.

Trash our rights
To make us secure.
Enrich the wealthy
To help the poor,

You must believe that
Failure's success,
Peace is war,
And no means yes.

44. 2 fleas for the Christmas week

Comment #102904 by cowalker on December 23, 2007 at 9:07 pm

It is interesting that critics of atheist arguments against God seem to assume that an atheist has to be familiar with all the arguments for God, and to be able to refute them, before they have the "right" to be atheists. Yet they find it sweet and wholly appropriate to teach the littlest tykes to pray and participate in religious rituals. They love to see simple old women telling their beads, or natives of non-Western countries singing about Jesus when said natives haven't the vaguest idea of what Aquinas wrote in his Arguments for the Existence of God.

According to them, you have to be one impressive intellectual to be a good faith atheist, but it requires no brains at all to be a believer. And then believers complain that atheists have an arrogant belief in their own superior intelligence.

Sheesh.

45. Jesus ad angers church groups

Comment #100802 by cowalker on December 19, 2007 at 10:56 am

Now I want to see one that shows Muhammed being hounded for gifts by his wives, and finding the perfect gift for all at X's jewelry store, at a bulk discount rate.

46. Abstinence Programs Face Rejection

Comment #100180 by cowalker on December 18, 2007 at 10:59 am

"Our critics would have governors believe that these programs are just somebody standing in front of the class wagging a finger and saying, 'No. No. No. Don't have sex.' That's not what these classes entail," Huber said. "They are holistic. They include relationship-building skills and medically accurate discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception."

Doesn't she get that it doesn't matter what the classes entail if they don't work? Would these dimbulbs want to continue forever a counseling-only approach to prevent burglary that didn't work?

"Our critics would have judges believe that these programs are just somebody standing in front of the convicted burglars wagging a finger and saying, 'No. No. No. Don't rob houses.' That's not what this counseling entails. The counselors are holistic. They include teaching impulse control and job-seeking skills and money management."

Well, I'd be all for it. Decrease the jail population, save lives from being ruined. So what say you, Christian conservatives? For how many years should we continue to handle the crime of burglary with the counseling-only approach if the rate of burglaries increases and it becomes increasingly obvious that the program isn't working?

47. Girl, 16, dies after hijab dispute with father

Comment #97308 by cowalker on December 11, 2007 at 9:44 pm

robotaholic:

you KNOW that any religion that can cause a parent to kill their child must be a perversion- these people are COMPLETELY brainwashed

Speaking as a parent, I say that this is a profound statement.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law fought for, and won, custody of a toddler fathered by their daughter's boyfriend. Said boyfriend had impregnated their daughter some two months before. The mother of the other toddler had succumbed to drug addictions, and the other toddler had been turned over to Children's Servies.

You can say they are crazy. Having interacted with the sweet, delightful "other" toddler in question, I say they are normally conscious of moral demands made by their position. It would have been easy for them to pretend young daughter's problems had nothing to do with them. Instead they chose to respond with heart and generosity.

48. The empty myths peddled by evangelists of unbelief

Comment #97148 by cowalker on December 11, 2007 at 2:00 pm

It may be a dim sense of the unreality of their beliefs makes militant atheists so vehement and dogmatic.

Or it might be seeing religious fanatics bring down the Twin Towers, killing thousands and providing Bush with the perfect excuse for an everlasting "War on Terror." Or it might be reading polls that say an atheist can never be elected to a high office in the U.S. Or it might be witnessing a set of events like the Terry Schiavo obstructionism, or seeing the anti-choice brigade outside Planned Parenthood every day. Or perhaps it's seeing the teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. beginning to rise after six years of exhortations to abstinence instead of sex education. Or maybe it's hearing that gays must be denied the right to marry because that's how God wants it. Or maybe it's seeing mobs demanding that a British teacher be put to death for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammed." Or maybe it's the endless slaughter of non-Muslims in Africa. Perhaps it's seeing embassies attacked over some lame cartoons of Muhammed.

Has the author considered whether any of these things might get us a little hot under the collar?

49. Is Infant Male Circumcision An Abuse Of The Rights Of The Child?

Comment #96317 by cowalker on December 10, 2007 at 10:45 am

Fun fact from the Wikipedia entry on "Circumcision"

In 1949, the United Kingdom's newly-formed

National Health Service removed infant circumcision from its list of covered services. Since then, circumcision has been an out-of-pocket cost to parents, and the proportion of newborns circumcised in England and Wales has fallen to less than one percent.

As a procedure paid for by insurance, parents chose it. When it wasn't paid for, they didn't. This probably tells us more than we want to know about how parents make decisions like this for their children.

50. Atheists' sign sparks controversy

Comment #96287 by cowalker on December 10, 2007 at 9:54 am

rustylix:

I've often felt the giant 200ft cross right next to the interstate I-57, near Effingham, IL, was an attack on my lack of belief in superstition as an atheist.

themanchoo:

Wow that's one big Effing(ham) cross! Yes I think I'd be offended if that monstrosity was casting its shadow near where I live.

That thing is also made entirely of aluminum siding, which makes it very ugly. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is a monument to a mythology, but at least it's a beautiful example of Gothic architecture.

Last year I did a count of creches in our midwestern town, in the middle middle class area where we live. There was maybe one for every fifty houses, maybe two angels for every fifty houses, although most houses had lights, reindeer, Santa, or giant snowmen or candles.

Every person is free to put up a creche on his own lawn, but how many choose to do so? Go out into your neighborhood this year and do a count.

Christians are just trying to retain control of the public turf. They don't care enough about the Jesus Reason for the Season to go out and buy an illuminated creche and put it on their lawn.