The Republican candidate for the US senate in Indiana Richard Mourdock has created a furor by saying in a debate with his Democratic opponent that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” [Read more…]
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…]
Evangelist Billy Graham has put out full-page ads in Ohio newspapers including the Plain Dealer basically calling on people to vote for Mitt Romney. [Read more…]
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.
Recall my post on Pulpit Freedom Sunday when some churches openly challenged the IRS to revoke their tax-exempt status by explicitly endorsing candidates. [Read more…]
Ed Brayton has already covered the details of the fall from grace of Dinesh D’Souza, who has resigned from the presidency of The King’s College, an evangelical school whose mission seems to be to produce Christian warriors who will shape public policy. [Read more…]
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…]
Because I honestly never know which is which when talking to Christians.
(Thanks, as always, to Jesus and Mo.)
Ever since Black Like Me was published in 1961 chronicling the experience of a white man posing as black in the segregated South, others have tried similar things. One of the latest is Timothy Kurek who grew up as your stereotypical Bible belt fundamentalist Christian, even to the extent of attending the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He naturally hated homosexuality in all its forms. [Read more…]
The Neanderthals are an interesting species though unfairly treated. They are frequently portrayed as knuckle-dragging idiots, serving as a metaphor for people with retrograde views, especially with respect to gender and sexuality, though there is no reason to think that they were any worse than the ancestors of our own species at that time. [Read more…]