The increasing numbers of Hispanic and other minorities in the US means that their votes are crucial to winning elections and so winning over this demographic would seem to be a natural goal of all political parties. But doing so has been problematic for the Republican party.
[Read more…]
It appears that not only is church attendance declining overall, church leaders fear that religion and churchgoing is becoming increasingly seen as something that mainly women do, which is likely to lead to even greater male defections from religious institutions. Stephen Colbert looks at some novel attempts to boost attendance and to also give worship a more manly image.
[Read more…]
Apparently the new conservative and libertarian hero Cliven Bundy, who does not recognize the existence of the US and feels his cows have the right to graze on federal land as a result of his belief, has developed a yearning for the media spotlight that has descended upon him and holds a press conference every day.
[Read more…]
This quite poignant article looks at the anguish of clergy who realize that they either no longer believe in a god or have serious doubts. The problems seem to start during the seminary years and appears to be quite widespread which makes one wonder how many clergy are actually closeted non-believers.
In interviews with 32 men and women from Pentecostal, evangelical, mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Mormon backgrounds, they discovered that many, like Dunphy, started wrestling with doubt in seminary.
Most said they kept quiet out of fear of disappointing others or because they didn’t have anyone to talk things through with.
“I wanted to believe in God; all those years, I wanted to,” one former Presbyterian clergywoman says in the book of her time in seminary. “I wasn’t really sure if I did or not, but I wanted to.”
…And once the seminarians were leading congregations, they reported even more isolation and frustration.
“You do a lot of crying,” a Mormon bishop says in the book. “You try to talk to your wife about it, but she’s still pretty orthodox, so it’s hard on her. You’re alone. You’ve got no one to talk to because you’re a bishop … So it tears you apart.”
If there is one job where you need to be totally in sync with your institution’s mission, it has be to that of religious clergy. Having to tell people all the time to believe in something that you yourself think is false could well lead to at least misery, if not depression and eventual breakdown.
Lawsuits challenging the banning of same-sex marriage by states or the non-recognition of those marriages that were performed in states where they are legal, have been cropping up all over the place and every one of them has been successful so far. Georgia has now become the last Southern state to be sued.
[Read more…]
I have written many times before about how the US government abuses is infamous ‘no fly’ list. People arrive at an airport either within the US or abroad to come to the US and are told that they cannot board the plane. No reasons are given for the denial and the affected people cannot find out why they are on the list or whether they are on the list at all or what they can do to try and get off it. It is as perfect an example of the arbitrary denial of due process as one can think of.
[Read more…]
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system the entropy will either stay the same (for reversible processes) or increase over time (for irreversible processes). The entropy of a closed system can never decrease, except for short-lived random fluctuations. But an open system that can interact with its environment can have its entropy decrease.
[Read more…]
While much media attention is being paid to the defiance of the Ukrainian government by various armed groups in that country, you may have missed the story of armed defiance of the US government taking place right here.
[Read more…]
The right to abortion has been severely restricted in the US by making it harder to get one and Ohio is one of the worst states in this regard. To counter this, the Cleveland Skeptics and Northeast Ohio Secular Woman are challenging Center for Inquiry Northeast Ohio in a local Bowl-a-thon for abortion access.
[Read more…]
Stephen Colbert returned from his break and used two segments to make fun of the media fuss over the announcement that Hillary Clinton’s daughter is pregnant. Colbert mugs a lot for the camera but in these segments he outdid himself. I was really impressed at how flexible his face is. Watch especially at the 3:24 mark on the first clip and the 1:00 mark on the second.
[Read more…]