godlessness
pharyngula | May 18, 2006Jer 14:14 Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
Jer 14:14 Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
Jer 14:15 Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that prophesy in…
pharyngula | May 17, 2006Readers, if you have received a copy of America, Return to God sent in my name, it's not my doing. Someone is apparently putting my name and email address in the order form as the friendly donor sending that crap out, and I'm now getting outraged email from people who are disgusted with it.
It's kind of heartening, actually, even if I am getting undeserved blame. A lot of people don't like that Christianist nonsense.
pharyngula | May 17, 2006Amanda Marcotte on Pandagon discusses Sam Harris on Alternet, and they've both got smart things to say…but you have got to read the comments. Sam Harris says things like this:
On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them. Propositions like "Jesus is going to come back in the next fifty years and rectify every problem that human beings create"--or, in the Muslim world, "death in…
pharyngula | May 16, 2006Tristero hits the nail on the head with his post about the possibility of a National Christian party (NaXis)—as much as we liberals would like to see the Republicans self-destruct under the influence of the Religious Right, it does us more harm than good if it further weakens the Rational Right.
So, yes, Republicans should boot the Bible-thumpers out of positions of serious influence in their party. But no, the christianists should not be encouraged to form a NaXi Party as that could rapidly lead to Very Bad Things which all of us, especially liberals, would come to regret. And let's not make…
pharyngula | May 13, 2006This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney general of the state of Alabama, as a Democrat…with some very strange views.
Tyson said aside from his views on race [he wants to "reawaken white racial awareness"] and the Holocaust [he's a denier], Darby also has publicly advocated legalizing drugs and shooting all illegal immigrants.
I…
pharyngula | May 12, 2006Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism" by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time…
pharyngula | May 8, 2006My mailbox today contained something very amusing, if it weren't so evil: someone sent me a copy of this 128 page, glossy rag titled "America, Return to God", from Great Commission Center International. It's a wretched but expensive looking thing, full of articles from such lying luminaries as David Barton, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, and Tim LaHaye, all advocating an American Theocracy. I learned that the passion of Dobson's heart is to deny homosexuals the right to marry, Barton urges us all to vote Biblically, LaHaye thinks God will not bless us as long as pornography is legal.
Whoever…
pharyngula | May 6, 2006Julia Sweeney has a new play, "Letting Go of God", and describes her path to atheism. It's different than mine—she was drawn to religion by mystical feelings, and rejected it on intellectual grounds after inspecting it up close, while I've never found any appeal in the mystical or supernatural—so she's much more sympathetic than I am.
"The world is modernizing so quickly, people want to latch on to things that seem familiar," she mused. "Religion identifies people, roots them in a tradition bigger than themselves, reminds them to be compassionate. I get that."
I don't see the reminder to be…
pharyngula | May 4, 2006I suspect Coturnix knew I'd be unable to resist this test, even though once I started answering the questions I found most of them kind of dopey. Even so, I squeaked past his score.
The Ardent Atheist The results are in, and it appears that you have scored 76%...
You are an atheist, pure and simple. You think God is just one big lie, and consider religious people to be both annoying and beneath you. Ardent atheists will argue tooth and claw for their position, and have no truck with people that won't listen. You think being an atheist is the only way to lead an honest life, and see no…
pharyngula | May 4, 2006Various science-deniers at the ID websites were unhappy with me because I said belief in ID was an indicator of incompetence, and that I wouldn't vote to to support tenure and promotion for one of their guys. I think they ought to adopt Florentino Floro as a cause.
"They should not have dismissed me for what I believed," Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital's Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.
Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and…
pharyngula | May 2, 2006I get lots of hate mail, but it's actually not that often that I'm cc'ed complaints sent to my acting chancellor and the university PR person. Since he's willing to share, so am I…so here's Mr Daryl Schulz's defense of free speech:
I have known a few people through the years that have gone to UM Morris and thought it to be a reputable institution affiliated with the University of Minnesota. But you can't be serious about being proud of one of your Associate Professor's blog winning an award when it contains such hate towards religion or faith of any type (http://www.morris.umn.edu/webbin/…
pharyngula | May 1, 2006Man, the comments on my guest editorial at the Raw Story are nuts. I don't know if the word "secular" brought out a flock of trolls, or if that place is always infested with these uncomprehending goons. There are a couple of people who seem baffled by the fact that I wrote a positive piece on the virtues of secularism, yet my prior comment on Melinda Barton was a negative work that concentrated on criticizing her sloppy logic and sneaky redefinitions. It's bad enough that they are surprised that one person can use two different tactics, but they're also suggesting that the fact that I didn't…
pharyngula | April 30, 2006
Remember Melinda Barton and that awful piece on the Raw Story? It was taken down, and now it's back up with a few changes, I think. The editors asked me to submit a rebuttal. It's online at the Raw Story now, along with that lovely icon to the right ("Secular Horror"?). You can read it there, or if you are so annoyed at the Raw Story that you never ever want to visit their site again, I've put a copy below the fold.
I'll just add that the first comment over there makes me regret being nice. No, I do not retract or regret anything I originally said about Barton's hacky work, and that is not…
pharyngula | April 30, 2006This is not funny.
Five children between 9 and 16 years old died and several others suffered burns when lightning struck a white-painted metal cross set on a hill in the town of Santa Maria del Rio early on Sunday, according to two newspaper reports.
If they'd paid as much attention to science as they did to piety, though, there would be a little less grief in the world today.
pharyngula | April 26, 2006Here's a description of the contents of her newest book:
Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. In Godless, Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us:
Its sacraments (abortion)
Its holy writ (Roe v. Wade)
Its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal)
Its clergy (public school teachers)
Its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free)
Its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the "absolute moral authority" of spokesmen…
pharyngula | April 25, 2006Should the godless be a little more generous in dealing with believers? Here's an argument that advocates a little more charity; that we ought to recognize that belief in the supernatural is a nearly universal human condition, that it's a useful coping mechanism for dealing with the unknown, and that it's a mistaken belief, not a moral failing.
I'm not entirely convinced. You can substitute the word "ignorance" for "supernatural belief/spirituality/religion" and it fits the whole argument just as well. Yet I don't feel any desire to make excuses for ignorance, and I certainly don't have…
pharyngula | April 24, 2006The Mirecki case is over.
The trail has gone cold in the investigation of a roadside beating reported late last year by a Kansas University professor.
Douglas County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Lt. Kari Wempe said Thursday that detectives had finished their paperwork related to religious studies professor Paul Mirecki's report that he was beaten by two unknown men on Dec. 5, 2005, on a roadside south of Lawrence.
The office has not identified any suspects and, unless any new leads come in, the investigation is finished.
At the time, Mirecki was under fire for comments he had posted online…
pharyngula | April 24, 2006The editor of the Raw Story has stuck a little preamble on Melinda Barton's piece…the one I criticized yesterday. It makes it worse.
Editor's note: If you've arrived here, it wasn't through the RAW STORY main site, but rather one of several blogs that have latched onto this piece as an example of "religious intolerance." I would ask readers directed by these blogs to take careful note of how many times Ms. Barton announces that she is not talking about all atheists, as her critics have claimed.
When I read this piece, I knew that some people would infer ideas from it that simply weren't in…