A US District Court judge has ordered a North Carolina county government to stop having an opening prayer at its official meetings.

These prayers were not the usual generic appeals to a higher power. They were pretty much over the top in terms of its overt Christianity, referring to the virgin birth, the resurrection, and that salvation was only through Jesus.

Recall that the US Supreme court has already agreed to hear a case during its 2013-2014 term about the constitutionality of opening prayers at the Greece, NY city council meetings. I discussed the history of such opening prayers, the defining 1983 case Marsh v. Chambers, and the case of Greece here.

The military has broadened its views quite a bit when it comes to accommodating a wide variety of religions, including the choice of what religious symbols are allowed to be put on tombstones in their cemeteries. Yet when it comes to chaplains, the catch is that atheists, humanists, and other non-believers are not yet fully included because of the requirement that chaplains be endorsed by at least one of about 200 recognized groups, and non-believers (and Wiccans) are not among them. An army chaplain who wanted to change from Pentecostal to Wiccan (his would an interesting story to hear!) lost his position and some other chaplains who have become humanists are fearful of revealing their change for fear of meeting the same fate. [Read more…]

The Vatican’s first envoy to Malaysia (a country that is 60% Muslim) has created a controversy by saying that he saw nothing wrong with Christians using the word Allah to describe god. Some Muslims are protesting, saying that this is a way to convert Muslims to Christianity which, incredibly, is a crime in many Islamic countries. They have called him an ‘enemy of the state’ and asked that he be recalled. [Read more…]

When I said that one of the main problems with religion is that they are killjoys who frown on anything that gives people joy and pleasure, I was too sweeping in my judgment.

It turns out that at least one religious group, the Rabbinical Council of California, is bucking that perception and has granted kosher certification to ‘personal lubricants’. Don’t know what they are or why it was felt that they needed to be kosherized? See the fascinating details here.

Let’s hear it for the Rabbinical Council of California for realizing that religion can be fun!

Update: Sad to say, the RCC has changed its mind and yanked the kosher certification. They explain that they had misunderstood the ‘intended uses’ of the product.

It has been well established that there is little correlation with being moral and law abiding and being religious. (Via reader Norm, I learned of an interesting post by Hemant Mehta on some recent data on the self-reports of religious affiliations of the prison population.) But how can religious people, who believe that there is a god who not only knows everything that they do but can actually read their minds and is able to mete out horrendous punishments for evildoers, commit really awful crimes? Why isn’t the wrath of god or hell a deterrent? [Read more…]

Because you may become the topic of his next sermon.

When people get tired of modern life and yearn for the languid bygone age of genteel manners where everyone knew their proper place and there wasn’t all this talk of ‘equality’ and ‘rights’ and so on that give so many people uppity ideas, many may tune in to Downton Abbey for a refreshing breeze of nostalgia. As for me, I go over to the website The Thinking Housewife where I can be assured that right thinking will prevail and old-fashioned values upheld. [Read more…]