The neural basis of seeing God?

original

A remarkable case report describes the brain activity in a man at the moment that he underwent a revelatory experience.

According to the authors, Israeli researchers Arzy and Schurr, the man was 46 years old. He was Jewish, but he had never been especially religious. His supernatural experience occured in hospital where he was undergoing tests to help treat his right temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), a condition which he had suffered from for forty years. As part of the testing procedure, the patient stopped taking his anti-convulsant medication. Here’s how the authors describe what happened:

While lying in bed, the patient abruptly “froze” and stared at the ceiling for several minutes, stating later that he felt that God was approaching him. He then started chanting prayers quietly, looked for his Kippa and put it on his head, chanting the prayers more excessively. Then, abruptly, he yelled “And you are Adonai (name of the Hebrew God) the Lord!”, stating later that god had revealed to him, ordering him to bring redemption to the people of Israel.

The patient then stood up, detached the EEG electrodes from his skin, and went around the department trying to convince people to follow him, stating that “God has sent me to you”. When further questioned, he said that he does not have a concrete plan, but he is sure that God is going to instruct him what he and his followers should do on their way to redemption.

The full article is here. The Times of Israel also has this story.

President Obama is Bullying God.

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When the Obama administration told every public school in the country that students who identify as transgender can use whichever restroom and locker room they want, parents and school administrators gasped. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the decree would be “the beginning of the end of public school system,” while a school superintendent said the directive was going “straight to the paper shredder.”

Beyond rejecting the Constitution, Obama is also challenging God’s authority, Anthony argued.

“I think he is bullying God,” Anthony said. “He is forcing his redefinition of sexuality on everybody, regardless of their religious beliefs.”

The president, Anthony continued, is “acting like a theologian while being a politician.” So, as a pastor, Anthony has every right to speak about this situation because Obama has “forayed into his territory.”

Silence from Christians, he said, is not going to cut it.

Full Story Here. So, a federal guideline is bullying ‘God’ (there’s that effing placeholder again. Be specific, name your god please). Does that mean that this so-called redefinition of sexuality is being forced on ‘God’, too? How is it possible for this most amazing, super-powered ‘God’ to be bullied? Either your ‘god’ is great, or seriously weak. Looks like the latter in this case. I wonder if it ever occurs to people like Anthony that their belief is seriously weak, too, as they are convinced they must fight their God’s battles. I don’t see how you can truly believe a god exists if you must leap to a vicious defense, and declare your ‘god’ to be bullied into submission.

Atheists are just pre-Christians.

(Photo: Screenshot/KSFY-TV) Atheist billboards in Sioux City, South Dakota.

(Photo: Screenshot/KSFY-TV)
Atheist billboards in Sioux City, South Dakota.

Pastor Jeff Hayes of Faith Temple Church responded to 20 atheist-themed billboards in his city that display messages such as “God didn’t create man” and “prayer doesn’t work,” by telling local news station KOTA-TV that atheists who criticize religion might just be “pre-Christian people” who need prayer to experience a personal spiritual awakening.

“I think it’s good for Christians to have a reaction and we can be negative toward the Free Thinkers but I think we should just pray for them and just believe that, wow if there is a God, is He big enough to reveal Himself to them,” Hayes added.

“Pre-Christian”. Is this like “Pre-Owned” and “Pre-Born”?

Full Story Here.

Why Christians Will Win the Transgender Debate.

Image courtesy of Dennis Hlynsky via Flickr creative commons - http://bit.ly/1VWTOaW

Image courtesy of Dennis Hlynsky via Flickr creative commons – http://bit.ly/1VWTOaW


Yesterday, I posted about an article: Why Christians Will Lose the Transgender Debate. There’s been a response as to why the author of that article is wrong.

…Unfortunately, Merritt is quite wrong in arguing that “conservative Christians will lose the transgender debate.”
[…]
Some might be guilty of doing this, just as some Christians focus on theology while ignoring people, but everyone I speak to about the transgender issues is focused on people rather than ideology.

How so?

First, they are focused on the people affected by transgender activism, such as the many schoolchildren who are being negatively affected and whose cases are now coming to public attention, or the women who have been sexually abused in the past and have now become unintended victims of transgender activism. [That link goes to a youtube video made by Alliance Defending Freedom, and if you don’t like being outraged first thing in the morning, or any other time, skip it.]

Do these people not matter?

Do we overlook other victims – including innocent little children – because they are not part of the LGBT spectrum?

[…]

The reality is that transgender activists expect us to embrace someone’s self-identification absent any scientific evidence, meaning that Bruce Jenner is now to be recognized as Caitlyn simply because that is how he now self-identifies. And should his biology and chromosomes affirm that he is a man, we are still expected to embrace him as a woman.

Genitals matter! Wait, no they don’t, chromosomes matter!

In that sense, it is transgender activists who sometimes ignore science and who open the door to the very dangerous slope of “perception is reality.” (For a striking example, see my video on the man who became a woman then became a mythical dragon.)

[…]

As for the stance we must take as followers of Jesus, as I’ve said over and again, we can reach out to those who are marginalized without sacrificing our children on the altar of political correctness and radical LGBT activism.

I invited Jonathan Merritt in joining me on the front lines as, together, we resist radical LGBT activism while reaching out to LGBT individuals with compassion.

The whole article is riddled with the worst misinformation and bigotry.

Why Christians Will Lose the Transgender Debate.

Image courtesy of Dennis Hlynsky via Flickr creative commons - http://bit.ly/1VWTOaW

Image courtesy of Dennis Hlynsky via Flickr creative commons – http://bit.ly/1VWTOaW

This is a very good article, with a Christian take on why Christians will be losing when it comes to transgender politics and law.

When LGBT rights first became a national issue following the Stonewall Riot of 1969, conservative Christians responded with a disastrous campaign against gay and lesbian causes. Christian leaders cited pseudo-science claiming homosexuality was a “choice,” or worse, a mental disorder. Preachers regularly promoted the idea that AIDS was God’s judgment on LGBT people. And money began to flow into “ex-gay” Christian ministries that promised to make LGBT people straight, but ended up making them suicidal instead.

When it comes to conservative Christianity, it seems the more things change, the more things stay the same. A national debate on transgender rights has rapidly progressed in America, and predictably, conservative Christians have once again elbowed their way to the front lines. Christian leaders make speeches, pastors preach sermons, and political activists make cable news network appearances–each armed with rhetoric intended to incite panic and stir up fear.

Sadly, their messages are just as disconnected from reality as their response to the LGBT rights movement decades ago. By recycling old tactics, conservative Christians are poised to lose the transgender debate in America.

The full article is here. I’m very appreciative of progressive Christians who are actively working to make a difference, and recognizing that conservative Christianity isn’t good for anyone, including other Christians.

Are you gonna let the devil rape your children?

Another religious, um, person invades a Target, waving a bible about and screaming.

“Attention Target customers,” she yelled. “Do not be deceived, Target would have you believe with their Mother’s Day displays that they love mothers and children. This is a deception. This is not love, and they’ve proven it by opening their bathrooms to perverted men. I’m a mother of 12 and I’m very disgusted by this wicked practice.”

“Mothers get your children out of this store,” the woman yelled. “Mothers have enough decency to get out of this store, it’s a dangerous place… What Target has done is very hateful. It’s hateful towards families. It’s hateful towards mothers. It’s hateful towards children… Are you gonna let the devil rape your children?”

She then went on to accuse America of “bowing to the homosexual perverted agenda” and added, “You need to run and flee this place.”

“You need to run and flee this place”. One assumes she means Target, but if America is bowing to the gay agenda, perhaps it’s bible woman who should pack up and leave.

Via Raw Story.

https://youtu.be/TCIYsXhR1D0

Sunday Facepalm

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Wikimedia Commons.

Christians Sue State over ‘Abortion Mandate’.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Pushing back against the state’s notoriously liberal stance on abortion, a number of New York’s Christian organizations served the Department of Financial Services with a lawsuit, claiming the agency obscured regulatory language which forces employers to cover abortions.

The 44-page filing in Albany County Supreme Court uses terms like “moral evil” and “unspeakable crime” to describe abortion. It highlights a section of the “model language” used by DFS over the last two years — a standard state form which dictates how insurance companies operating in-state should present their coverage to clients.

According to the lawsuit, Section 6 of the “model language” includes a subsection dealing with “Interruption of Pregnancy.” The language states: “We cover therapeutic abortions. We also cover non-therapeutic abortions in cases of rape, incest or fetal malformation.”

“Practically speaking, ‘therapeutic’ would include abortions for emotional health, fetal health, fetal malformation,” said Mary DeTurris Poust, spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany. “Really, we’re talking about any abortion.”

The Diocese of Albany is one of 13 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which also includes Episcopalians, Baptists, Lutherans, a nursing company and a general contractor in Plattsburgh. Their document goes to significant lengths to outline core beliefs on the “sanctity of every life,” including a number of paragraphs dealing with the concept of life beginning at conception in the mother’s womb.

The group claims the model language was “known only to DFS and the health insurers, and never disclosed to plaintiffs.” They go on to say they were caught unaware when their respective insurance companies informed the group that “they had been separately covering abortions under the service category of ‘medically necessary’ surgery.”

“There is a possibility that we could have already been forced to pay for an abortion,” DeTurris Poust said on Friday.

The full story is here. I will be forever grateful that when I had an abortion back in the 1970s, no one thought that was any of their business. Mine was quiet and professional, and there were no screaming, hateful people anywhere, thinking they had an absolute right to interfere with a private decision to have a medical procedure.

How to destroy an entire civilization.

Elsa in Disney's Frozen.

Elsa in Disney’s Frozen.

While some groups want the fictional ice princess in Disney’s animated hit Frozen, to have a girlfriend in an upcoming sequel, conservatives recoiled in rage, demanding instead that Elsa be set up with the requisite Disney prince, Right Wing Watch reports.

Twitter users have been mounting a campaign using the hashtag #GiveElsaAGirlfriend to make the character Disney’s first lesbian princess.

Tweet

A conservative group, CitizenGO is up in arms about that prospect, responding in-kind with the hashtag #CharmingPrinceForElsa.

“Disney is facing fierce pressure from liberal groups who are demanding their writers turn Queen Elsa into a lesbian during the sequel, Frozen 2,” Gregory Mertz wrote to fellow CitizenGO members. “Please join the 37,000 who’ve already signed our petition against this absurd ‘movement.’ With our petition, we’re suggesting Disney with a much better idea… An idea that promotes solid family values to our children and represents the natural family.”

Then there was Kevin Swanson, who has advocated for the execution of LGBT people, who was already seething with fury over the first installment of Frozen.

“Of course Elsa is going to get her girlfriend eventually,” he said on his radio show Monday. “That’s the way you destroy sexuality. That’s the way you destroy an entire civilization. The entire social system of the United States of America is collapsing.”

Full Story Here. I haven’t seen Frozen, but I’m all for Elsa having a girlfriend. She could even be a Charming Princess.

Porn-Again Christians

Lot and his daughters, Hendrick Goltzius, 1616.

Lot and his daughters, Hendrick Goltzius, 1616.

I think I’ll just let you all read everything and reach your own conclusions. It’s no secret that Christians struggle with sex, let alone sexuality. You can’t really ignore that struggle when Christians are constantly attempting to mandate their view of sex and sexuality into law.

Porn-Again Christians: What Happens When a Biblical Literalist Launches a Sex Site?

The initial article, linked above, is safe. Be warned that the site under discussion there is not safe for work, so have a care with your clicks.

Liberty Counsel Conference: The Awakening.

Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin.

Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin.

Last weekend, the anti-LGBT hate group Liberty Counsel held its annual conference, The Awakening, to provide a platform for anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim voices.But the event was much more than that –– at times, it seemed a call to battle. “The war wages. We cannot stand idly by,” the Counsel said in promotional materials. And true to form, the panel of speakers formed an angry chorus.

The vitriol was perhaps best embodied by retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who employed violent rhetoric in lamenting the advances in LGBT equality, particularly in regards to trans people. Boykin is executive vice president at the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council. He is perhaps best known for his anti-Islam statements over the years.

At The Awakening, however, Boykin lambasted non-discrimination ordinances that include sexual orientation and gender identity protections, especially those designed to protect trans people from humiliation and discrimination by allowing them to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. He even threatened physical violence against anyone using a bathroom that didn’t align with their assigned sex at birth:

“Where is the Christian world today? Where are the Christians of America today? They should be flocking to people like Kim Davis. They should be flocking to the city council to say, ‘No you’re not going to let a man go in my daughters bathroom, just because he feels like a man today.” Boykin said. “Where are the Christians that are standing up to these kind of evil.”

[…]

“Homosexuality is a developmental, gender identity disorder,” Quinlan harped, later adding, “I tell parents and friends who have loved ones in the lifestyle, to pray for relational failure –– that every relationship they have that is in that lifestyle will fail. And it does eventually because it’s a bankrupt relationship and it’s based on false premises.” Ironically, Quinlan, who claims to be a “former homosexual,” was married to a woman who also claimed to be “ex-gay.” The two made their marriage the focus of ex-gay activism and proof of change until 2008, when they divorced.

Full Story at SPLC.

Saudi Cleric: Homosexuality should not be punished.

Salman al-Ouda talking to young YouTube producers (Emad Alhusayni/Flickr)

Salman al-Ouda talking to young YouTube producers (Emad Alhusayni/Flickr)

A leading Saudi cleric has publicly stated that homosexuality should not be criminally punished, during a visit to Sweden to visit Syrian refugees.

“Even though homosexuality is considered a sin in all the Semitic holy books, it does not require any punishment in this world,” Dr Salman al-Ouda said in an interview with the Swedish Sydsvenskan newspaper, adding that homosexuals would be punished “after death.”

Homosexuality has long been a controversial topic in much of the Muslim world. LGBT people still face the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

[…]

“Homosexuals are not deviating from Islam,” continued Ouda in the interview. “Homosexuality is a grave sin, but those who say that homosexuals deviate from Islam are the real deviators.

“By condemning homosexuals to death they are committing a graver sin than homosexuality itself.”

He added that Islam did not “encourage individuals who have same-sex attraction to show their feelings in public.”

His comments have already provoked controversy in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East.

[…]

He also condemned the abuse of the concept of Sharia law by Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

“Sharia is a very broad and wide concept and it is a concept that has been kidnapped,” he said.

Though still a controversial topic, Ouda is not the first senior Islamic figure to propose changing the legal status of homosexuality.

Middle East Eye has the story.

America, Home of Delusional, Prudish, Selfish Religious Nuts.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

Kali Holloway has an article at AlterNet about how America compares to the rest of the world.

…The conservative American notion that people with far better healthcare, civil rights laws and gun control “hate our freedom” is a wishful imperialist delusion. Worse, it’s not fooling anybody at this point.

That said, if all the world’s a stage, America is a prime player: a rich, loud, attention-seeking celebrity not fully deserving of its starring role, often putting in a critically reviled performance and tending toward histrionics that threaten to ruin the show for everybody else. (Also, embarrassingly, possibly the last to know that its career as top biller is in rapid decline.) To the outside onlooker, American culture—I’m consolidating an infinitely layered thing to save time and space—is contradictory and bizarre, hypocritical and self-congratulatory. Its national character is a textbook study in narcissistic tendencies coupled with crushing insecurity issues.

How to reconcile a country that fetishizes violence and is squeamish about sex; conflates Christianity and consumerism; says it loves liberty yet made human rights violations a founding principle? In conversations with non-Americans, should the topic of the U.S. come up, there are often expressions of incredulity and bewilderment about things that seem weird when you aren’t from here. Talk and think about those things enough, and they also start to seem objectively weird if you are from here, too.

That perception is held even by countries that share similarities with America. The Pew Research Center rounded up surveys from recent years that point out some of the ways American and European attitudes diverge, not infrequently widely. Obviously, there’s plenty of cultural difference among European countries, and surveys aren’t necessarily nuanced in describing how the citizens of entire countries see the world. But these polls do tell us something about the things large swaths of those countries agree on, as well as how those popular ideas tend to differ from pervasive notions and sensibilities within America.

The Full Story is Here.

LC: Pedophiles Behind Non-Discrimination Laws

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel.

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel.

From Right Wing Watch: On today’s “Faith and Freedom” radio program, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver asserted that North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law and the Religious Right’s boycott of Target are necessary because efforts to allow transgender people to use facilities that match their gender identity are being pushed by pedophilia advocates.

“The fact is we know sexual assaults occur,” he said, “they are going to occur with or without these laws, there’s no question about that. People commit sexual assaults, they commit them in buildings, they commit them in restrooms; but what you have now done, knowing that sexual assaults occur, knowing that they occur in these places where women are trapped and they can’t get out, now what we’ve done, through these laws, is we’ve opened the door for every rapist and pedophile.”

“Frankly,” he continued, “when you look at some of the people behind the North Carolina law and some of these other laws, who are they? They have been identified, some of them that have been advocating this, as pedophiles. Some of this is being financed by those who are actively promoting pedophilia.”

Naturally, Staver did not state just which groups are advocating child abuse.

The Advocate also has this story.