I saw recently this news item where a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Colorado City, AZ found on his doorstep a tiny kitten that, while still alive, had been encased up to its head in cement. He took this as a warning sign from the members of the cult to leave town. [Read more…]
One sees the word ‘cult’ thrown around quite often and the word has deeply pejorative connotations. People who belong to mainstream religions are comfortable calling some minority religious groups cults but the distinction between a religion and a cult is elusive. Is Scientology and cult or a religion? How about Mormonism? How about the Moonies? How about the Branch Davidians or the Sai Babaists?
I too have tried to find a distinction but failed. The best that I could come up with is that a religion tends to have the properties of being old, having many members, and some political clout while those groups that are called cults tend to lack any or all of those qualities. But since there were no real differences in the nature of the beliefs involved, I concluded that there is no substantive difference between a cult and a religion.
But via Pharyngula I saw this graphic that I think captures the essential difference.
Being an atheist in America is, at least for now, to be a member of an unpopular minority. While atheism and conservatism are perfectly compatible philosophies, the combination can be poison for those who seek to be in good standing with the Republican party which currently is under the tight control of religious fanatics. An atheist Republican is an even greater endangered species than a gay Republican or Muslim Republican. [Read more…]
We know that Mary, the mother of Jesus, likes to show up in unlikely places such as toast, water stains, and the like. But it is not always a clear-cut identification, especially since we have no idea what Mary, or even Jesus for that matter, even looked like. So what should you do if you think Mary has appeared on some item of yours to make sure that it is the real deal before you start worshipping it, telling your friends about it, or flogging it on eBay? [Read more…]
On June 8, I blogged about news reports that said that under pressure from South Korean creationists, their ministry of education had eliminated evolution from their science textbooks. This was, of course, rather bad since it suggested that creationists had established a beachhead in another country. I expressed surprise that a country that was surging in terms of science and technology was taking such a retrograde step. [Read more…]
There is a horrific story about a mob of thousands of people in Pakistan being incited by religious leaders to pull a mentally ill man from a police station, beat him to death, and set his body on fire for allegedly ripping out pages of the Koran. [Read more…]
A recent post about accommodationists and new atheists revolved around the question of whether science and religion were incompatible and if so, what one should do about it. The question of what constitutes religion and incompatibility perhaps needs to be clarified a bit. [Read more…]
The new French government has said that it would implement one of its campaign promises and make same sex marriage and gay adoption legal, starting in 2013. The prime minister told parliament that “Our society is evolving, lifestyles and mentalities are changing.” [Read more…]
In response to my two earlier posts where I condemned the practice of circumcision (see here and here), commenter TGAP Dad took issue with my response to a comment in the second post in which I said that “The only reason people do it is because parents want to indelibly mark their religious beliefs on the child”, pointing out that in his own experience growing up in an almost exclusively Christian community, circumcision was still routinely practiced, disproving my statement since Christianity does not require the practice as a religious identifier. [Read more…]