Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a journalist in Afghanistan, has been arrested and condemned for downloading articles on the internet that are critical of Islam.

Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World), was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded was deemed to be offensive to Islam.

Shamsur Rahman, the head of the court, told Reuters news agency: “According to… the Islamic law, Sayed Perwiz is sentenced to death at the first court.

“However, he will go through three more courts to declare his last punishment,” he said.

I would say right now that Islam is an evil and atrocious collection of obsolete myths that is a threat to human sanity and safety (along with Christianity and Judaism, the other Abrahamic afflictions), but I better not—somebody reading it in the wrong place might get arrested.

Ali G interviews four people with opinions about religion. It’s a bit hit or miss, but listen for the bit at the end.

Ali G wonders why so many nuns work as strippers on the side, and the easily offended Catholic priest says, “I don’t think you can demonstrate that statistically…it’s an absurd statement that you’ve just made. …

I would really prefer that you move off this topic because I find it offensive. It’s not documented by any kind of evidence. It’s hearsay.”

Hilarious irony there.

The North looks ever more attractive — read this excellent article on the collapse of organized religion in Canada. The numbers of church members is simply plummeting up there, a state we can only dream of bringing to pass here in the US (numbers are declining here, too, but we can hope that this is an inevitable descent and that Canada is only leading us by a few years.)

One interesting hypothesis for why it’s happening is that we can thank, in part, feminism.

Women — the traditional mainstays of institutional religion — in huge numbers abruptly rejected the church’s patriarchal exemplar of them as chaste, submissive “angels in the house” with all of the social and moral responsibility for community and family but none of the authority.

Unable to find acceptable religious role models or religious ideals that were not painful or oppressive, they reconstructed their identities as secular and sexual beings.

As they progressed into university graduate and professional schools and entered the work force, their horizons broadened and they discovered ways of serving that were more valuable than doing dishes and running church picnics.

I don’t know how solid the data is on that claim, but it’s at least intuitively attractive. Mothers are typically far more influential on their children’s religious belief than fathers, at least in my experience, so anything that draws women away from the church is going to have strong effects.

Maybe if we want atheism to succeed, we need to promote women more. Everyone thinks of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens when we discuss the godless movement — but perhaps we should be giving more props to Susan Jacoby, Julia Sweeney, Ellen Johnson, Natalie Angier, Margaret Downey, even Madelyn Murray O’Hair … hey, have you noticed? There are lots of actively atheist women!

It’s easy. Look at all the students who think the cure for social problems is praying for 40 days.

Ah, maybe we shouldn’t pick on ’em too much. It’s cruel to taunt the handicapped.

(UM students and alumni should feel free to defend the honor of their school in this thread.)

You really should read this Senator Charles Grassley’s investigation into megachurches. It’s about time someone pulled down these big-time scams.

Nearly 2,000 years later, some who claim to speak in Jesus’ name are taking a different view. Consider Bishop Eddie Long, who pastors a megachurch in Lithonia, Ga. With a salary approaching $1 million a year and a nine-bathroom mansion situated on 20 acres, Long’s choice of vehicles reflects his opulent lifestyle: He drives a $350,000 Bentley.

Far from casting out money changers, Long is likely to join them. In a 2005 profile in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he defended his high-flying ways, insisting, “I pastor a multimillion dollar congregation. You’ve got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that’s supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.”

These charlatans tend to hide behind the first amendment and claim that their congregations have a right to worship as they please (which generally seems to mean throwing money to the pastor at his bidding). As the article makes clear, Grassley isn’t interested in challenging them on constitutional issues: he’s investigation financial fraud, not doctrine.

That sounds fair to me. Churches ought to repay their tax exemption by being required to provide full, open, public disclosure of all of their finances.