The whole sordid Falwell saga laid bare

The website Politico has done a deep dive into all the nefarious things that Jerry Falwell engaged in while president of Liberty University. It is quite astonishing. He managed to avoid oversight by his supposed bosses on the Board of Trustees by forcing out of the board and his administration those who were not loyalists who raised concerns that his behavior was not consistent with the highly puritanical code demanded by the university of its students, faculty, and staff.
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Michele Bachmann urges her god to use his iron rod

One of my favorite wackos, former Minnesota congresswoman and seeker of the Republican nomination for president in 2012 Michele Bachmann, has tweeted out a video of her praying, urging her god to bring out his iron rod and smite the delusions of the forces of evil arrayed against Trump who are trying to defeat him. It is likely that she does not have a dirty mind like mine and is thus oblivious to the double entendre.

Pope Francis snubs Trump’s attempt to exploit him

No doubt in an effort to woo Catholic voters by trying to appear as if Pope Francis was friendly with the Trump administration, secretary of state Mike Pompeo attended a conference on religious freedom organized by the US embassy to the Vatican. But Vatican officials not only declined to take part in the event held on its very doorstep, the pope declined to even meet with Pompeo.
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A nice survey of research into the origin of life

The theory of natural selection provides a way of understanding how life, starting from one or a few microorganisms, has evolved over time to give us the immense variety and complexity we see all around us now. But it does not, at least directly, tell us how the very first thing that we can call a living organism came about. Natalie Elliot provides a nice survey into what current research says about the origin of life and she says that this research has also resulted in significant changes in what we mean by ‘life’.
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Book Review: The Unnecessary Science by Gunther Laird

Some readers may recall that a couple of years ago, I made fun of a press release issued by the publishers of a book by Edward Feser that had the title Five Proofs of the Existence of God and claimed that “the existence of God can be established with certainty by way of purely rational arguments” (my italics). The point of my brief post was that life was too short to read yet another book claiming to prove the existence of any god since there have been so many failed past attempts. I said that if someone had actually come up with an irrefutable proof, that would be be earth-shattering news and reported all over the media and so I would wait and see if that a happened before wading through yet another theological treatise.
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Jerry Falwell’s fall becomes literal

Jerry Falwell, Jr., who had to resign as president of Liberty University after revelations about the swinging sexual lifestyle of him and his wife Becki, turns out to have even more hypocrisies. Falwell’s father, the founder of the university, had instituted extremely harsh restrictions on the student body when it came to dress, behavior, and alcohol, with a strict no-use policy for the last item. His son vigorously implemented these policies when he took over as president. But it now appears that Falwell is an alcoholic.
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Michele Bachmann resurfaces and hilarity ensues

Were you wondering what the nutty former Minnesota congresswoman and onetime contender for the Republican presidential nomination was up to these days? Me neither. After deciding not to seek re-election in 2018 where she faced a good chance of losing, she faded away. Or so I hoped. But there she is in the news again spouting one of her trademark nutty theories, and this one is a real doozy.
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The Falwells come out swinging, just not in the way you think

I said in an earlier post three weeks ago, after Jerry Falwell posted a photograph of him holding a drink with his pants unzipped and his arm around the waist of a woman who also had her pants unzipped, that I suspected that such reckless behavior by someone who publicly professed a highly puritanical code and demanded that students at Liberty University live by it under threat of strict punishment, may be a sign that he and his wife were secretly ‘swingers’, people who lived a libertine sexual lifestyle.

That indeed turns out that is the case as Falwell’s wife Becki’s lover reveals more and more details that what went on was more than your run-of-the-mill clandestine affair.
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Overcoming the fear of death the Epicurean way

Many people fear death and it has been argued that one major appeal of religion is that it enables people to think that they are immortal, that even if they physically die they will still live on in some spirit form.

Sam Dresser discusses how taking the approach of the Epicurean school of philosophers can reduce the fear of death without invoking an afterlife.
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