I’ve always wanted a handy translation guide for Christian cliches.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’ve always wanted a handy translation guide for Christian cliches.
My brief summary of the position of apologists for religion, The Courtier’s Reply, continues to rankle the believers, and they continue to make responses that only make me laugh at their cluelessness. The standard rebuttal is to claim that I was making an argument in favor of ignorance in the face of theological scholarship, followed by a laundry list of esteemed theologians … but never, and I mean absolutely never, even the slightest attempt to address the core of my criticism — not once have they presented a solid, confirmable reason to believe in a deity.
Here’s the latest example, and it follows the formula perfectly. How dare Myers accuse Tillich and Buber and Bonhoeffer and Gandhi and Bishop Tutu and Piaget and a long set of dropped names of promoting false beliefs? Yet, as usual, he cannot bring himself to actually discuss the substance of the issue: where is the evidence for his god? Listing invisible flounces, transparent ruffles, and phantasmal frills is simply a confirmation of the validity of my parable.
And yes, I do accuse his honor roll of theological luminaries of perpetuating lies, of credulity, and often, of pettifogging rhetoric. When someone advances remarkable claims of remarkable phenomena, like N rays or cold fusion or polywater (or natural selection or chemiosmosis or endosymbiosis), we demand evidence and skeptical evaluation…but not for religion. God always gets a pass from the people who already believe. They claim the existence of the most powerful, all-pervasive force in the universe, yet will provide not a single shred of support. And worse, this bozo calls the demand for evidence “hooliganism”.
If that’s the case, I’m proud to be a hooligan.
Do you think a class focusing on the Bible should be taught in public school? This is from a Virginia school that is trying to implement a Bible studies class — and if you’ve got some idea that maybe it’s an intellectual course which discusses the social and literary contributions of an important book in Western culture, it’s plugged as “the first step to get God back in your public school”.
John urges all to read a “lovely, lyrical and wistful piece” on religion. So I did.
Sorry, John, it’s the same old noise.
The essay by Peter Bebergal has some good points: it’s premise is to deplore biblical literalism because it’s bad theology that is trying to ape science, and it cripples the imagination. That part I can agree with entirely. Biblical literalism is a slavishly stupid way to enshrine an absolutist authority — a false authority — as a source of information beyond question. So I am sympathetic to about half of its message.
Coral Ridge Ministries surveyed their membership, asking them to rank the greatest dangers to America’s spiritual health. Top of the list is the ACLU; second are the homosexuals; third is abortion. Evolution doesn’t show up until #7, and atheists are #9. This is a very disappointing showing, people! You’re all going to have to get more militant, starting right now.
Still, when you look at the actual numbers, it’s not all that bad. 82% of the deluded followers of D. James Kennedy’s wacky ministry think atheists are “very dangerous”. I think there was a general trend of getting twitterpated about a whole bunch of secular stuff, and we all landed in a big heap near the top of their fears.
Also, “colleges and universities” ranked very highly. This isn’t surprising, and fear of education explains a lot.
Robert Bakker is one of the good guys, a paleontologist who really does an excellent job of communicating enthusiasm for science. I saw him talk at St John’s University a few years ago, and he clearly inspired the kids in attendance — I greatly enjoyed the talk too, even though one of his hooks was to incessantly emphasize the religious backgrounds of famous dinosaur hunters. It’s a strategy, all right? If he can get more kids to follow through on science, more power to him.
However, he also illustrates another unfortunate phenomenon: religion turns even good scientists’ brains to mush. In a recent interview on Laelaps, he said some awesomely stupid things.
While I think a non-sectarian comparative religion course would be a fine idea for our public schools, I don’t trust these bozos at all. Tennessee legislators want to stuff a bible studies class into the curriculum.
“Our government school teachers cannot constitutionally preach the Bible, but they can teach the Bible,” Herron said.
“I want students to study the greatest and most popular book in history. I want young people to understand how the Bible has enormously impacted literature, art, music, culture, history and politics. A Bible course will help students understand our culture and our highest and best values.”
A Bible class is not non-sectarian. A course that begins with the premise that the Bible is the greatest book in history is not unbiased. This is a completely phony bill that is trying to smuggle religious instruction into the public school system.
As usual, I expect the politicians to be completely oblivious to their religious agenda.
A major court decision in Vermont slammed the Catholic church there.
A Burlington jury issued a landmark verdict against the state’s Roman Catholic diocese Tuesday, ordering it to pay $8.7 million in damages to a former Burlington altar boy fondled multiple times by a priest the church knew was a child molester.
It’s a harsh penalty, but warranted by the way the church turned a blind eye to outrageously criminal behavior. I’d like to say that they’ll learn a lesson from it, but the comments from Catholic officials suggest that no, they won’t.
A grim Bishop Salvatore Matano, who attended the six-day trial, said in a brief, separate interview that the size of the verdict could pose serious problems for the diocese. He called the looming predicament a “sad and tragic moment in our history.”
Wrong! The sad and tragic moment occurred in 1972, when they hired the child molesting priest while fully knowledgeable about his prior history. The legal damages aren’t the problem, it’s what these people did to children.
“I have to look very seriously at what this verdict means as it impacts on our services and the activities of the diocese,” Matano said. “I have to be very conscious that the verdict as it stands will have a very serious impact on a rural diocese; a small, rural diocese.”
The diocese? What about the people? Where was your concern for the diocese when the church set a child predator loose upon them?
“I do not want in any way to inflict any suffering or any pain upon the faithful in this diocese because of what happened in the past,” Matano said. “That is certainly not appropriate, and I am conscious of the universal needs of the diocese.”
Oh, well then…it all happened in the past. No worries about the now, then. I’m sure there aren’t any child abusing priests any more, and the victim in this case…why, surely, he’s over it now.
Diocesan lawyer Tom McCormick said he was taken aback by the jury’s decision and would likely appeal.
“Clearly, in hindsight we should have, could have looked at things differently,” McCormick said. “We expected that a Vermont jury would not unleash a number of this sort for behavior that took place 35 years ago.”
These evil clowns in their funny suits are clearly out of touch. When you’ve defined yourself as a moral authority (often, the sole moral authority) you don’t get to back away from the consequences of your actions because time has passed or because the consequences are severe. Perhaps they ought to look at this expression of tangible outrage by a community as a not-so-subtle signal that they have not and are not supporting the actual behaviors that community considers important, and regards as part of the church’s trust.
Personally, I think bankrupting the gilded monstrosity of Catholicism is an eminently desirable goal in itself.
Just what we need — another evangelical Christian theme park, this one in the planning stages in Tennessee. This one has one particular instance of blinkered blindness, though, that I thought was rather funny.
The Park is planned as an “edutainment” experience, combining education and entertainment. The Park is without a particular religious ideology or theology and does not promote specific religious beliefs of any kind; instead, it is designed to bring to life history of Biblical times and stories from the Holy Bible.
If you read the rest, you’ll learn that this thing is taking fundamentalist, literalist reading of the Christian bible entirely for granted…how this translates into an absence of theology or specific religious beliefs is hard to understand, unless these people are so oblivious to the narrow theological domain of their beliefs that they are unable to imagine its grossly sectarian nature. Or unless they’re really stupid.
I have a daughter myself, who I want to grow up to be independent and free and sensible and interesting, so I can’t even imagine what it would take to bring a parent to this:
For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse.
Yikes. What did she do? Become a mass murderer, a terrorist, a destroyer of entire cultures by acts of destruction?
No, nothing quite so horrific. She was guilty of puppy love.
Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.
Abdel-Qader Ali is a coward and a monster, the warped product of a bestial ‘civilization’ that treats half its members as chattel and the other half as little better than junkyard dogs, brutes who will maintain the savage order by denying love and individuality and murdering anyone who does not precisely fit their mandated roles.
Abdel-Qader Ali is not an aberration, not some random psychopath who committed an evil and then, all alone and despised, tries to justify it. No, he’s part of a whole culture that favors this violence.
Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.
…
It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand’s two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.
‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said.
They are not men, they are abused dogs. They have no honor; honor is not blind, stupid obedience to a death cult that demands that you murder your children or your sisters for showing signs of humanity.
I count at least three tragedies here.
One is these ‘men’ who have had their minds corrupted by a foul religion.
The greatest is Rand Abdel-Qader herself, murdered for an infatuation.
The third is one only briefly mentioned: the mother, Leila Hussein. I wonder…does her skin crawl at having to submit to the vile creature who tortured her daughter to death, or is she sufficiently indoctrinated into the evils of her culture that she accepts it? Either way, it’s a nightmare.
