Best meme so far

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Michael

Filed under: Humor, Religions | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

Want Jesus out of government?

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Michael

A Jewish lawmaker form Minnesota wants to take Jesus out of legislative sessions. Great, right? Not quite.

A Jewish Minnesota lawmaker is asking Senate leaders to allow only nondenominational prayers to open sessions, after feeling “highly uncomfortable” when a Baptist pastor repeatedly mentioned Jesus Christ and Christianity in one of the invocations.

Democratic Sen. Terri Bonoff says she wants Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch to change the letter submitted to all visiting chaplains to say they are “required,” rather than “requested,” to make prayers nondenominational.

“I’m a very religious woman and believe deeply in God,” said Bonoff, of the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka. “We honor God in public and our political discourse, and that’s proper. But in doing a nondenominational prayer we are honoring him without violating the separation of church and state.”

Uh-huh. It’s not okay to prayer to Jesus because it makes people uncomfortable. But praying to God? Why, that’s just dandy. Who could that possibly offend? What part of the constitution could that possibly violate?

Bonoff is obviously a mental midget, but she still may be able to win this battle. She just needs to look at the system itself.

Koch said Wednesday she wouldn’t support such a requirement. She said the Senate invites leaders from numerous Christian and non-Christian faith traditions to pray, and notifies them that senators come from a diverse background. “I’m not going to get into the process of sort of editing prayer,” Koch said.

If senators can invite leaders from all sorts of organizations, Bonoff ought to invite an atheist leader. It’s Minnesota, get PZ Myers. Or any other atheist. It doesn’t matter. As long as the person proudly wears the label of “atheist”, all these Republican mooks will immediately start backtracking. Get the person to appear over and over; don’t let anyone think it’s just a one-time thing. Show the anti-constitutional Republicans that if they want to violate the separation of church and state by using government resources to promote religion, then they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of promoting views they don’t like. (Actually, the “consequences” would probably be very good, but I’m biased with my positive views of reason and rationality.)

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

God did it

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Michael

I’m thinking about making a drinking game out of all these videos. Every time one of these people says “amazing”, take a shot. Only problem is I don’t like hard alcohol. Besides, I think I would die if I did that.

I guess there are at least some honest Christians out there who aren’t disowning the God of the Old Testament.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Wow, some honesty in Biblical translation

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Michael

I constantly see Christians making excuse after excuse over certain phrasings in their cultural holy book. It always happens that they argue in favor of the particular book and views their parents favored, as if by some magnificent stroke of luck they happened upon the One True Christianity. It’s pathetic. I mean, come on, let’s just look at the actual documents and actual words and translate them appropriately. No, that isn’t going to bring anyone to any cosmic truth, but it will at least bring some honesty to such a big piece of literary history.

The Catholic Church, while not known as the most truthful institution, especially if you want to look at their boy-rape record, and a council of its members made at least one honest change to one version of the Bible:

In a change in a passage in Isaiah 7:14 that foretells the coming of Jesus and his birth to a virgin mother, the 1970 edition’s reference to “the virgin” will become “the young woman,” to better translate the Hebrew word “almah.”

Of course, they aren’t going to alter their irrational belief in the magic of a virgin birth, but at least they have the wording correct now. And for everyone else it will be easier to point out that, hey, Mary had sex. Probably many times. Because that’s what happens not too long before babies are born.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Confessions, corrections, and the iPhone

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Michael

Ashley F. Miller, blogger extraordinaire, writes for a site called Social Axcess. In one of her recent articles she talked about the iPhone app the Catholic Church has recently created for information about confessing. She notes a few key things:

  • The Church has had a lot of recent problems
  • The Church is usually behind the times
  • This is a good move for the Church

None of these things are too crazy, offensive, or out-there. What’s more, they’re all true. The Church has had that whole boy-raping scandal. I think that’s been a problem. It has less and less (positive) interest in it by the day. This isn’t a problem in my view, but from the Church’s perspective I’m sure it is. And it has to constantly defend itself against New Atheists and all its other critics; it hasn’t been doing so hot in that department. And I’m just talking about the first bullet point.

But, Michael, you say, this is the Internet! Shouldn’t someone attack Ashley’s post from an irrational perspective?! Why, I suppose you’re right. Today’s lucky contestant is Luke Vinci.

In correction to Ashley Millers blog post regarding Confession via iPhone…

Let’s stop right there and be sure to note the word correction. Okay, continue.

While the Church has had its share of scandal in the past few years; I must counter that the “new atheist” movement is nothing new to secular assaults on the Church.

I’m flagging this for two reasons. First, the misuse of the semi-colon is egregious. Second, when did anyone say the New Atheist movement was new? And “assaults”? Methinks someone has a rather grandiose persecution complex for his church.

Through all the Church has consistently become stronger out of strife. And that can be represented in the 1 billion Catholics across the world.

So, um, what does this correct? I don’t recall reading that the Church couldn’t recover from its boy-raping. And I don’t see how a large number has any relevance whatsoever. Maybe it’s that whole desire to be grandiose thing again.

The Catholic Church is the fastest growing religion in communist China, is seeing a boom in conversion/membership in San Diego County among many other places around the world and while there are places were the Church is struggling to grow such as old Europe the Church is continually extending Her arms as the Universal Christian faith.

Ah, I see it now. Ashley said the Church is struggling so Vinci is pointing out where it isn’t struggling. Too bad that still doesn’t discount the fact that it’s struggling. Ya know, mostly because of the boy-rape.

In regards to the statement that the Church is behind the times or that the app is “trying to keep it real”; the Church has been slow to just jump at the whims of what public opinion says.

So the fact that the Nazis were bad was merely a whim of public opinion? That condoms save lives is but a fleeting fad of fancy?

This is a fact and the Church moves slow but deliberate in all decisions. All of those decisions are made within the confines of Faith and Reason.

Uh-huh. Sort of like when the Church reasoned that Galileo should be murdered if he didn’t tell the lies the Church wanted to hear. Or maybe when it reasoned that covering up boy-rape was better than exposing all the rapists it harbored. Total use of Reason (capital “R”).

The Church is a guiding institution and Her slow response has served Her well for over 2000 years.

Just not gays, Jews, minorities, Northern Ireland, the victims of the Inquisition, or women. Oh, and all the raped boys.

Ashley Miller should take note that the confession app is not an app that takes the place of confession.

Since Ashley never said the app was to replace confession, it seems Vinci needs to bust out his dictionary and look up the word “correction”. I think he may want to study it for a few hours.

The app that is the first to have an imprimatur from Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana is a guide to help Catholics in their Christian tradition discern what sins they have committed.

I like Ashley’s response on this one:

I can’t imagine belonging to an organization that has so many silly rules that I need assistance in figuring out if I’ve broken them or not.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Religions | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Punching bags

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Michael

Aaaand the very first winner of my new series Punching Bags is Wintery Knight. Congratulations, Mr. Knight! This is the probably the greatest thing you’re ever going to accomplish in your blogging career.

There’s a lot of silliness out there, but what really grabbed my attention by standing heads and shoulders above the rest was a series of posts by Wintery Knight about atheism and morality. It’s astonishing just how poorly pieced together it all is. Let’s take a peek at WK’s methods:

First of all, I wrote up a list of questions to use to interview atheists about their views.

Second, I posted the raw results of my survey.

Third, I listed the minimal requirements that any worldview must support for in order to ground rational morality.

Fourth, I argued that atheism does not ground any of these requirements.

Fifth, I argued that Christian theism does ground all of these requirements.

Sixth, I posted my own answers to the questions.

I really recommend taking a look at that first link; the arrogance and snobbery drip from every word:

Who is safe to talk to?

In this post, I am going to explain to you clearly how to engage your atheist friends on these issues. But be careful. Some atheists have fascist tendencies – when they feel offended, some of them want to bring state to bear against those who make them feel bad. Atheists struggle with morality, it just doesn’t sit well on their worldview, even though they sense God’s law on their hearts, like we do.

1) Thank goodness WK is here to help everyone know which atheists are okay. Some of us bite, don’t you know.

2) It’s good to know he has already defined morality when he declares that atheists struggle with it. Of course, we all know this is just another case of a theist assuming “objective” in front of “morality”.

3) Of course atheists sense God’s law in their hearts. Just like how Christians really hate science and reason deep down, amirite?

But WK’s interviews appear to be entirely irrelevant. They aren’t necessary to any of his further posts in any way. Besides that, his questions are statistically meaningless since he, um, doesn’t obtain any statistics; his ‘survey’ holds no value and is nothing more than an exercise in condescension. Let’s move on.

His next move (third link) is to try and tell us what is required for “rational moral behavior”. Gee, I wonder if he’s going to assume “objective” anywhere, gaming the issue in his favor.

1) Objective moral values

There needs to be a way to distinguish what is good from what is bad. For example, the moral standard might specify that being kind to children is good, but torturing them for fun is bad. If the standard is purely subjective, then people could believe anything and each person would be justified in doing right in their own eyes. Even a “social contract” is just based on people’s opinions. So we need a standard that applies regardless of what people’s individual and collective opinions are.

Whoa! My whole world view has been devastated! And in only 5 sentences. How could I have been missing something so obvious?!

Oh. Wait. Woulddya look at that. We need a way to tell good from bad. Well, wouldn’t that require that there is an objective good and bad in the first place? Or maybe WK is just making an assumption, causing him to beg the question. Could it be that our ideas of “good” and “bad” have a basis in our cultures and societies and human nature and our emotions and physical bodies and relationships and intelligence? And if so, couldn’t we use ethical and moral theories, applying them to the facts of the world and our derived definitions of “good” and “bad”, thus shaping how we behave? And wouldn’t this be the very definition of rational? (Hint: The answer to all of my questions is “yes”.)

But despite being so far off, WK trudges onward:

What difference does it make to you [an evil stupid dumb butt atheist] if you just go ahead and disregard your moral obligations to whomever? Is there any reward or punishment for your choice to do right or do wrong? What’s in it for you?

Bracketed clarification added.

I’m not so sure I would trust someone who thought the point of morality was to get something for himself. (Oh, who am I kidding. I trust a ton of Christians and they all necessarily believe that the point of being good is to get a big pretty prize at the end of the road.) I guess I just prefer to act out of genuine reasons, not for the sake of enriching myself in some unevidenced afterlife.

Anyway. WK goes on and on with his blog, sometimes saying dumb things about evolution, other times promoting science that makes him feel special. He’s an old Earth creationist, perhaps the most nebulous of all creationists (tell me again, when did humanity begin?), but in the end he’s just another punching bag.

Don’t forget to submit other potential punching bags.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The abuse of science

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Michael

We see creationists distort science all the time. They usually do it when the topic is something they really don’t understand; they’re driven by an ugly agenda. Sometimes that agenda is to explicitly undermine real science. Other times it’s to abuse science. This post is about an instance of a creationist engaging in that abuse.

New study links father absence to increased bullying – so when people want to reduce bullying in schools across the board – instead of just protecting their favored students – remind them how important stable one man / one woman families are.

This comes from Neil, that religious nutbag who doesn’t know the difference between the scientific concept of development and his subjective declaration of “humanity”. Committing the same error as his source, he draws inappropriate conclusions from the study. Fortunately yours truly is here. As someone who isn’t interested in distorting science for my own gains, let me explain what the study actually said.

This research investigates the relationships among bullying behavior, mother’s and father’s work hours, and early adolescents’ perceptions of whether they spend sufficient time with their parents. In cross-sectional models, we find maternal work hours are modestly associated with increases in bullying behavior. However, in more rigorous change models, our findings indicate that over time maternal work hours bear no direct relationship to bullying behavior. Moreover, in our final models, an interaction between father’s work hours and perceptions of time spent with him has one of the most robust associations with bullying for adolescents. When paternal employment is full- or overtime and youth perceive they do not spend enough with their fathers, bullying behavior increases. Other important factors that shape bullying behavior are the quality of the home environment and the adolescent’s school performance.

That’s just the abstract; the rest is behind a paywall. More information can be found in the ScienceDaily article.

Basically what the study showed was that when kids had their fathers around, they were less likely to be dicks. Great. What the study didn’t do was compare children of gay couples who had both parents around. It is logically, scientifically, and morally inappropriate to conclude that same-sex marriages produce kids who tend to bully more. We have no evidence even suggesting as much.

It really bothers me when people take these sort of studies and then try and use them to denigrate gay marriage. It isn’t that the bigotry behind it all is frustrating – though it is. It’s that, hey look, we have this scientific study here that was done by a lot of hard-working people with a lot of experience and knowledge, their methods are good, the conclusions are interesting, and there are some clear things we can draw from it all. But then there are these anti-scientific, lazy people with no experience or relevant knowledge, no understanding or appreciation of the methods used, and they aren’t interested in the conclusions at all; it’s all about abusing the science for some petty point, a point that isn’t even on the right side of history.

I’m all for applying our scientific knowledge in how we run ourselves as a society, how we consider our worldviews. I just don’t want to see it all get abused for political points. That’s what happened to this study. It’s unfortunate. We have this serious issue of bullying being considered by a group of serious individuals, and we have these good results that tell us kids are more well adjusted in a particular category when they perceive their fathers, married and heterosexual, as being around more, but then someone has to come around and piss all over everything. All we know from this research is what is says about kids with married, heterosexual parents versus other kids with married, heterosexual parents. Claiming it tells us something different or more is an abuse of science.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Leniency for monsters

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Michael

I wrote back in December that I had very little confidence in our judicial system in sentencing faith healing parents who are responsible for the deaths of their own children. Lenient sentences happen again and again – and bad parents keep praying for their children instead of seeking real medical help. This recent sentencing isn’t going to help.

Speaking in court, [negligent father] Herbert Schaible asked the judge [Carolyn Engel Temin]for leniency to allow the couple to support their family.

“We are grieving and will always feel the loss of our son,” Schaible said. “With God’s help, this will never happen again.”

Temin sentenced them to 10 years of probation, during which they are required to seek routine and emergency medical care for their seven children, ages 1 through 15.

No, with the help of the judiciary doing its job and discouraging other parents from neglecting their children, this will never happen again. With the help of the legislatures in the 30 states which offer protection for faith healing, this will never happen again. With the eradication of religion, this will never happen again.

Two of the three things I mentioned are within easy reach.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , | 8 Comments »

The horrors of Uganda

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Michael

At the hand of Christian hate, gays are being targeted and murdered in Uganda.

David Kato, a Ugandan gay rights campaigner who sued a local newspaper which outed him as homosexual, has been beaten to death, activists have said.

Police have confirmed the death and say they have arrested one suspect.

Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper published the photographs of several people it said were gay, including Mr Kato, with the headline “Hang them”.

US President Barack Obama was quoted as saying he was “deeply saddened” to learn of Mr Kata’s death.

His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged authorities to investigate and prosecute the killers.

I have no idea how anyone can say ideas don’t kill people. We’re composed of ideas, of motivations, of convictions – of influences. If we can’t say humans are compositions of ideas, I don’t know how we can even talk about humanity. Anti-gay propaganda, rhetoric, hate, and violent encouragement led to the death of David Kato. And the fire, created from ignorance, is constantly being stoked by a strong Christian faith in the country – along with a strong influence from American Christians who hate gays.

This article would be longer if I wasn’t so sickened.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , | 18 Comments »

Just an awful response

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Michael

Someone wrote a terrible letter to the editor a few days ago.

We have seen a lot hatred in this decade, and it is increasing by the minute. The problem is that people have completely lost faith in the Lord.

One of these sick people showed his true colors during the Christmas season by actually throwing eggs at my lovely manger. I pray that he sees the light.

Marie-Anne Jacques

Augusta

I’m not going to respond to Jacques’ comments here because I have already written a response letter to the paper. (I will, of course, publish that here once it gets printed.) But to what I will respond is one of the comments to this letter.

People will deny God at all costs in order to not have to face themselves. You can believe that there is no God but it takes more to not believe than it takes to beileve as more than 80% of Americans do believe.

The prophecies in the Bible clearly show that there is a God. There is no other way so many prophecies could be fulfilled unless there is a God. These prophecies that were written thousands of years ago are being fulfilled right before our eyes. Israel wasn’t a nation for close to 2000 years and now it is a nation as prophesied. A one world cuurency leading up to the mark of the beast, a one world religion, a one world government, a one world military, Israel performing sacrifices in the temple again; these are all things being planned right now all over the world fulfilling prophecy. The Bible talks about the sun getting so hot that it will burn people’s skin and on NASA’s website it tells of solar flare ups that are to start in about a year that will scortch the earth and all of our government leaders have built underground dwellings to hide from this onslaught from the sun. All this is foretold by the Bilbe and much more and it could never be foretold unless there is a God who knows the beginning from the end like it says.

Just awful.

That first line is the exact reason I wrote about Christians deep down. It amounts to calling atheists liars. “Why, you just deny God at all costs for your own sake!” No, no, no. Don’t you get it? I don’t believe in your god. In fact, I don’t believe in any god. Please don’t claim that I am just lying to you right now and I really do believe. I don’t. Deal.

And that second line? Aside from ending in a point of gibberish, it is a profound misunderstanding of atheism. I am NOT claiming that I know there is no God. There very well could be. There could also be a teapot in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. But I see no evidence for it. Just the same, you have no evidence for your god.

Oh, but wait. There’s that whole paragraph about how so many prophecies have been fulfilled. Like a global currency. Or a global religion. Or a global government. Or a global military. Right? I mean, right? I think my favorite is the claim of a global religion, if only because the commenter just got done citing that nearly 20% of Americans do not believe in God (the number is lower, but I don’t expect this guy to deal in facts).

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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