It is well known that the Catholic church has a problem with its young people, many of whom see it as out of step with current views on sexuality. The church has locked itself into its dogma and that is unlikely to change anytime soon but you would think that it would realize that it needs to tread delicately in this area so as to avoid needlessly alienating people with high-handed actions. [Read more…]
Some people are fearful that Sharia law (i.e., laws that are based on Islamic religious beliefs) will be introduced in the US and are taking steps to pre-emptively pass legislation that would prevent this from happening. As one might expect, I am opposed to any laws or legal system that depends upon religion for their justification. We have a secular constitution and the Establishment Clause should effectively bar any government action that seeks to advance or hinder any particular religion or advance or hinder religion in general. [Read more…]
When sophisticated theologians talk about god, one quickly finds oneself wandering around in a rhetorical fog in which god becomes a constantly shape-shifting entity described by metaphors whose meanings are always just beyond one’s grasp. One has to struggle to understand what they are talking about because what these sophisticated thinkers imagine to be god is so far removed what any ordinary person thinks that I have long suspected that they are actually atheists struggling to find a way to salvage belief in something transcendental that would not be seen as manifestly anti-science or otherwise ridiculous in the circle of intellectuals amongst whom they move. [Read more…]
One of the hallmarks of how change occurs in religious organizations is that it is done very slowly, by a series of small steps. We see that happening with the Boy Scouts of America. They have been getting a beating about their hostile attitude towards gay members and leaders, with people and businesses withdrawing their financial support, always a bad sign for organizations like that. [Read more…]
I posted about Pat Robertson’s idiotic response to a question as to why nowadays miracles seem to happen only in places like Africa and not in the US. Why was god not showing the US any love, given that we are his chosen people and all? According to Pat, it is because we have become a nation of skeptical smartypants [Read more…]
I have written before how the tax exemption given to churches creates opportunities for all manner of abuse. The practice of granting churches tax exemptions is long-standing, dating to before American independence but its constitutionality was not tested until 1970 when the US Supreme Court ruled that while it would not be permissible for the state to actually give churches money, granting tax exemptions was a passive form of state support that passed muster because the state had an interest in promoting organizations that improved the general welfare and the Establishment Clause discouraged entangling religion with the state, and having the state tax churches would lead to more entanglement than exempting them from taxation. [Read more…]
While Pope Francis has received great press for his symbolic gestures of openness and warmth and humility, the real test of how different he would be from his predecessors was when he was confronted with decisions that had significant consequences.
One of the first was how he would deal with the ‘problem’ of the ornery US Catholic nuns who were more focused on helping the poor and sick and homeless, and not pulling their weight when it came to enforcing Catholic dogma against gays and contraception and abortion. Francis’s predecessor Ratzi set in motion a process (run by a male archbishop of course) to overhaul the Leadership Conference of the Women Religious, the organization tat represents the majority of US nuns. The nuns were none too pleased with how that process was being conducted. [Read more…]
Readers will recall the post about the Orthodox Jew of the ‘kohen’ variety who wrapped himself up in a thick plastic bag in order to prevent himself from becoming ‘ritually impure’ by flying over cemeteries. There were many questions raised by me and in the comments about how this was supposed to work. [Read more…]
Whenever I give a talk, as I did recently, on the fight over the teaching of evolution in schools, I am almost always asked why these take place mostly in the US. That is not exactly true but in many other countries, there is no equivalent of the Establishment Clause that people can appeal to to keep religion out of the affairs of the state and so there is little recourse to the courts. In other countries, religion is either so deeply entrenched that the dominance of religious views are taken for granted or religion is so weak (in most of the developed world) that it is not a serious issue or gets resolved in the political arena. [Read more…]