Near death experiences

Believers in an afterlife will often point to near-death experiences (NDE) or out-of-body experiences (OBE) as proof. These are situations where people who for whatever reason come close to dying say they had an out-of-body experience where their spirits/souls moved around freely and they saw things they could not have known about prior to that experience. Close examination of their claims usually find flaws in their story and there have been no conclusive evidence that such a phenomenon actually occurs, but this does seem to deter true believers who eagerly lap up such stories. [Read more…]

Important legal victory involving tax breaks for religion

The way that religious people get tax breaks in the US is a disgrace. But Barbara B. Crabb, US District Court judge in Wisconsin, ruled yesterday that the tax exemption given to clergy for their housing allowance is unconstitutional. This allowance is taken advantage of by about “44,000 ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and others” and “some clergy members could experience an estimated 5 to 10 percent cut in take-home pay.” [Read more…]

The demon-haunted world of Illinois

Illinois legalizes same-sex marriage, with governor Pat Quinn signing the legislation into law on Wednesday. The law will go into effect on June 1, 2014. Hawaii’s legislature has also passed a similar measure and its governor signed it into law on Wednesday too. So the two of them become the 15th and 16th states to legalize such marriages. Since both laws were signed on the same day but Hawaii’s law takes effect on December 2, 2013, it may be listed as the 15th state and Illinois as the 16th. [Read more…]

Pastor found guilty of officiating at son’s gay wedding

Frank Schaeffer is a Methodist minister. In 2007, his gay son asked him to officiate at his wedding and he did so, even though the Methodist Church does not approve of same sex marriage. It turns out that three of the pastor’s four children are gay and that the son who got married had earlier contemplated suicide because of the difficulties of being gay in a small rural conservative town in Pennsylvania. [Read more…]

Heaven is not for real

It looks like 2014 is going to be big year from religious mush in films. In addition to the Noah film I wrote about yesterday, Heaven Is For Real will be released around Easter, supposedly based on a true story about a little boy who had a near death experience and then gave a remarkably detailed and accurate account of all the people and things that he had seen in heaven, including things that he could not have known about. [Read more…]

Noah goes Hollywood

The story of Noah in the Bible poses a serious challenge to religious believers. Taken literally and looked at without using a religious lens, this is a monstrous story of the worst genocide in the history of humankind, and committed by a supposedly loving god no less. Religions have for a long time managed to gloss over this story to obscure the most ghastly aspects of it. They spend time on quite a detailed description of all the preparation work on building and stocking the Ark, quickly go over the actual slaughter, and then spend time on what came afterwards, with rainbows and sunshine and birds and flowers heralding the dawn of a wonderful new world. [Read more…]

‘Inter-religious’ panel discussion

I took part in a panel discussion on religion on Wednesday. It was organized by the students living in the dorm of the Cleveland Institute of Music, so about twenty students of classical music attended. The panel consisted of professors of Christianity and Islam from another university, a professor of Judaic studies from my university, and me. I will refer to the others as C, M, and J respectively. [Read more…]