The puzzle of internecine religious violence

Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that religious groups, especially the orthodox/fundamentalist ones, seem to have no qualms about meting out harsh treatment to even their co-religionists for what, to the outsider, seems like absurdly trivial reasons. In that case, it was due to the inherent misogyny of orthodox/fundamentalist religions that seek to keep women in an inferior role, with strict rules about what they can wear, go, say, and do. [Read more…]

The Mormon god dislikes people of color

The Book of Mormon, like other religious books, has its origins myths. An integral part of their story is that god punished the bad tribe (the Lamanites) by giving them dark skin while the favored ones (the Nephites) are given light skin. Brian Keith Dalton (aka Mr Deity) is a former Mormon and he explains how this racism is embedded in the Book of Mormon as an integral part of its theology. [Read more…]

Dan Barker to speak at CWRU on Thursday

Dan Barker, a former preacher turned atheist and now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, will be speaking on the topic of the separation of church and state on Thursday, Oct 25th, 7:00-9:00pm in the 1914 Lounge in the Thwing Center on the CWRU campus. Thwing Center is at 11111 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland just east of Severance Hall.

The event is organized by the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry and is free and open to the public.

The puzzling god gap in this election

Given all the talk that takes place in the fevered swamps of right-wing American paranoia about president Obama secretly being a Kenyan/Indonesian Muslim or godless Commie, coupled with the major war waged by the Catholic hierarchy against Obama on the issues of contraception and abortion (which has conveniently pushed aside all discussion about its abusive and pedophilic priests), one would expect that there might be a big gap in support among religious people for the two candidates. [Read more…]