Andy Borowitz says that Cardinal Bonifacius Steuer of the Netherlands, who had dreamed about being pope from his childhood and expected to easily win the papacy, was bitter about his unexpected defeat and blamed the media for misrepresenting who he was. [Read more…]
While Mitt Romney always had a tough road to winning the last election, the infamous video of him at a $50,000 a plate dinner complaining about the 47% of moochers likely put the lid on his chances. Now the person who made the video has emerged from the shadows. To no one’s surprise, he was one of the staff working the event. His name is Scott Prouty and he worked as a bartender that evening and in an interview he explains what caused him to record the event, how he did it, and why he agonized over what to do with it once he realized what he had. [Read more…]
So we now have a new pope. As expected, Francis has solidly reactionary views on same sex marriage, homosexuality, abortion, and contraception, and opposed the liberation theology of Latin America that was perhaps the only good thing to come out of the Catholic Church in the last half century. These features are hardly a surprise since all the cardinals who elected him were appointed by the two previous reactionary popes. [Read more…]
In a debate with religious people on the existence of god, atheists should win easily because all the evidence and arguments are on their side. After millennia of religious effort, what have religious people got to show in support of the existence of god other than vague appeals to the ineffable nature of his being? As Stephen Colbert said in an interview when his guest asserted the ineffability of god, claiming something is ineffable is great because you can say that you are right without having to explain it. [Read more…]
Brian Keith Dalton is a ‘Formon’ (former Mormon) and he shares with us the things he no longer believes, starting with the least crazy and moving up the scale of craziness. What is interesting is how even the least crazy sounds pretty crazy. (Via Machines Like Us.) [Read more…]
William Jessup University in Rocklin, CA is a Christian evangelical institution that has as its mission to “prepare Christians for leadership and service in church and society, through Christian higher education, spiritual formation, and directed experiences”, so you can see that it is a religious institution through and through. What surprised me is that up until now it did not teach any of the sciences at all, an astounding exclusion for a university these days. [Read more…]
I am pleased to pass along news from the Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB) and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation that their “Light The Night Walk Team raised $430,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society last year, the largest amount ever raised by a first year non-corporate team and the 4th largest amount raised by any team in the nation in 2012, including corporate teams.” [Read more…]
As a follow up to yesterday’s post on the inhumane nature of the US prison system, it might be helpful to look at two factors that have contributed to why the US has by far the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of absolute numbers and per capita, along with being extremely harsh in its treatment of them. [Read more…]
In one episode of the BBC TV faux documentary comedy series Life’s Too Short, actor Warwick Davis decides he needs some spirituality in his life and decides to explore a couple of religions to see if one of them might suit him. [Read more…]
As I have mentioned before, I am not a very sociable person. It is not that I am anti-social, shunning all human contact. It is that I am better described as asocial, someone who can interact with others on occasion and when necessary, but am perfectly comfortable being alone with my books, my thoughts, and of course the internet, where you can interact with the world without interacting with actual people. [Read more…]