The Virgin Mary seems to be quite the peripatetic these days, showing herself all over the place. It looks like time for the Vatican’s crack Mary verification squad to get into action. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The Virgin Mary seems to be quite the peripatetic these days, showing herself all over the place. It looks like time for the Vatican’s crack Mary verification squad to get into action. [Read more…]
Over at The Crommunist Manifesto, there have been a series of offerings from various people based on the above prompt. This is what I submitted in response to a request from that blog’s host: [Read more…]
I came across a website called The Thinking Housewife where the host Laura Wood and her friends (?) give advice to people who write in. A recent question was from Jennifer about what to do with new neighbors in their apartment complex who are lesbians and would like their child to play with Jennifer’s. Jennifer, a Catholic, wants to know the best way to protect her children’s innocence from being contaminated by hanging around with such undesirables. [Read more…]
When the eminent biologist E. O. Wilson visited our university in 2009 to give a lecture, a small group of people was invited to meet with him privately for a discussion. Some of the people in the group tried to ask him his views on science and religion but he responded with some vague noncommittal generalities. It was clear to me that he did not want to get into it. Wilson’s deep passion has been to try and get as many people as possible to realize the danger that the Earth is in and the need to take steps to protect it. He had just published The Future of Life (2008) and I felt that he avoided this touchy issue to avoid alienating potential religious allies in his environmental cause. [Read more…]
I read a news report that former students in a Catholic girls school in Rhode Island had written to the Vatican urging that the school be closed because of the abuses it inflicted on the students. [Read more…]
There are further signs that atheism is on the rise. David Niose points to surveys that show that for the first time ever, a majority (54%) of Americans “would vote for a qualified, open atheist for president.” This is a substantial increase from the 45% of 2007 and a huge increase from the meager 18% of 1958. [Read more…]
Several of the commenters to yesterday’s post on Pentecostal fervor had grown up in that religious tradition and raised an issue that I had not thought about, and that was what the children in attendance at these sessions thought about their parents getting caught up in the action and speaking in tongues and generally carrying on. Those comments are well worth reading. [Read more…]
Those of us who have argued for a strict separation of church and state warned those who wanted the wall breached that if they were successful they should be prepared to live with Muslim and other minority religious encroachment in public life in those communities where those groups happened to be the majority or had significant influence. [Read more…]
Those who are unfamiliar with the kinds of things that happen at Pentecostal services might be shocked by the extreme nature of the things that the congregation can get whipped up into doing. Babbling incoherently (also known as ‘speaking in tongues’) and wildly gyrating as if they were having a fit are common. This video clip that I received from readers Lisa and Norm gives you some idea of how wild things can get. [Read more…]