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Unitarian Universalists have recently started an effort to engage in the sort of civil disobedience that civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr and his followers did in the 1950s and 60s, and Mohandas Ghandi did in India a generation earlier.
http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/178994.shtml
Utah UU convicted for environmental activism
Federal jury faults Tim DeChristopher for blocking auction of oil and gases leases.
By Donald E. Skinner
3.7.11
Continue reading
This ironic title above refers to the incestuous relationship that has recently been established between two major bodies of the Baha’i Administrative Order (BAO) : The Universal House of Justice (UHJ) and the International Teaching Center (ITC). The former is the supreme governing body of the BAO, while the latter’s membership is appointed by the UHJ. The bureaucratic nature of this system is illustrated by the “alphabet soup” I used here, much like that of American governmental institutions. Note also that the buildings of the Baha’i World Center look a lot like the governmental buildings in Washington, D. C. Would you call this spiritual?
When the UHJ was first established in 1963, its membership included former members of the International Baha’i Council (these had been appointed by Shoghi Effendi) and members of various National Spiritual Assemblies. Later, the UHJ established the ITC, intended to take the place of the dwindling Hands of the Cause of God. Over several decades, however, more and more members of the UHJ have tended to come from the ITC, until today, ALL the UHJ members were elected from the ITC’s membership, which was appointed by the UHJ previously, making this BAO a pathetic mockery of democracy. The result is a system that is by nature extremely conservative and not open to new ideas that could allow it to adapt to changing circumstances.
This is truly no better than the Roman Catholic Church, in which the Popes are elected by the College of Cardinals, and these Cardinals are themselves appointed by the previous Popes!
For the sake of argument, I define “orthodox” in Islam as including the beliefs common to both the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, though the Sunnis themselves say only they are orthodox (much like orthodox Christians may be defined as including much more than the denominations called “Orthodox”, including Catholics and most Protestants).
There are several issues in Islam I find contradictory and thus I would never become a Muslim, even if I were to ever believe in a god again.
Religions as tools for social cohesion are indeed valid reasons for having them, since people are by nature social beings. However, using any religion that has demonstratively false dogmas as that tool is by nature unethical because you are encouraging people to lie to others about reality. It is even worse when you have a government take that religion and use force to make everyone follow it. All this does is make many people into hypocrites who act a certain way in public while privately doubting or denying the religion. This results in greater corruption. It is no coincidence that the ones who often come across as the most moral and are also deeply religious also turn out to be the most hypocritical. I think the reason for this is because their moral values are simply not based on anything real and things that are not based on reality are themselves not real. If you need to believe in the Bible, the Quran, or some other scripture to believe in God, to be moral or function in a social order, then you are actually a dangerous person because you will resort to all sorts of dishonest arguments, claims and assertions to keep your faith. Likewise, getting a government to enforce your religion on everyone merely makes the government dishonest. We shouldn’t tolerate this any more than we should tolerate mob bosses taking over a government.
Thus, Islamic states like those of Saudi Arabia and Iran are contemptible and should be condemned and opposed at every turn, and the concept of Sharia (Islamic law) should be completely thrown out in all societies. They are simply phony by nature!
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At the Panda’s Thumb blog, a commenter asked a simple question:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/07/design-and-fals.html#comment-265729
Does anyone have an example of something which is not “intelligently designed”? In Paley’s exposition of the “watchmaker” argument, he contrasts a watch with a stone. But the problem for a traditional theist is that God is the Creator of all things, including rocks. So, to be fair, I suppose that the request should include also unreal, hypothetical things. But the only unreal things that I can think of – centaurs, for example – are intelligently designed. (Which, by the way, shows that intelligent design is not sufficient to explain existence.)
So, what is the difference that intelligent design makes?
He got this reply:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/07/design-and-fals.html#comment-265730
🙂
rossum
Later, my seeing that hit me like a truck going 100 MPH. I then said:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/07/design-and-fals.html#comment-265838
circleh replied to comment from rossum | July 31, 2011 12:38 AM There is a website, stuffmadesimple.com, that claims to take complex subjects and make them easy for the average person to understand. But in doing so, it seems to have some underhanded agendas.
First, note that it puts out some videos that are actually very useful and full of valid information, like these two about diabetes and swine flu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGL6km1NBWE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGWOAL1PTl4
It soon becomes obvious that the people running that website are Mormons and are using it, and a sister site, to teach the Mormon religion:
http://mormonsmadesimple.com/index.html
Certainly, the other videos made by this group are consistent with Mormon attitudes. It is common knowledge that Mormons are overwhelmingly conservative in politics, are heavily involved in genealogical research, and are hostile to the idea of same-sex marriage.
I have dealt with Mormonism earlier. For that reason, I don’t respect the makers of the Made Simple video series. It seems they are trying to take advantage of what I call the Credibility Effect.
The Credibility Effect is when someone or some institution that puts out valid or useful information at an earlier time tries to use the reputation built up from that to entice people to accept information that is actually dubious, even downright false or nonsensical, for ideological or religious purposes.
Here is another example of that effect in action: https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/shane-killian-sells-out/
No matter how noble or right you appear to be at certain times, that doesn’t mean your claims should EVER be taken at face value. ALL claims from ALL people should be tested and when those claims fail the test, the claims should be discarded.
(Note: part of this was originally posted as a comment here.)
I am even more disgusted with the Roman Catholic Church than ever! Why? Because of this:
http://www.countmeout.ie/suspension/
This is a website based in Ireland telling people how to leave the Church. However……
Suspension of the Defection Process
In April of this year, the Catholic Church modified the Code of Canon Law to remove all references to the act of formal defection, the process used by those who wish to formally renounce their membership of the Church.
Since then, the Catholic Church in Ireland has been reflecting on the implications of this change for those who wish to leave the Catholic Church. Despite our requests for clarification, the Church have yet to reach a firm position on how or whether they will continue to accept requests for the annotation of the baptismal register.
In recent weeks we have been contacted by an increasing number of people whose defections have not been processed, due to the limbo created by this canon law amendment.
Because of this uncertainty, we have taken the decision to suspend the creation of declarations of defection via CountMeOut.ie from today (12th October 2010).
In response to this, the Church in Ireland released the following statement to RTE News:
The Holy See confirmed at the end of August that it was introducing changes to Canon Law and as a result it will no longer be possible to formally defect from the Catholic Church. This will not alter the fact that many people can defect from the Church, and continue to do so, albeit not through a formal process. This is a change that will affect the Church throughout the world. The Archdiocese of Dublin plans to maintain a register to note the expressed desire of those who wish to defect. Details will be communicated to those involved in the process when they are finalised. Last year 229 people formally defected from the Church through the Archdiocese of Dublin. 312 have done so, so far this year.
Look, you do not need permission of the Catholic Church to leave it. To even bother to go through any “”Declaration of Defection” process is to acknowledge the authority of the Church over you.
If you were baptised as a Catholic you are still counted among the congregation of the church, regardless of what beliefs you currently hold.
Which is of course a grievous lie! And you can publicly and loudly condemn the Church for this.
Go here to send messages of condemnation:
http://www.catholicireland.net/contact-us
Now, for those who do wish to abandon Catholicism but don’t wish to submit to the Church’s hoop jumping, there are alternatives. By joining another religious body, you make your rejection of Catholicism beyond dispute.
Ex-Catholics who are still Christian: Join a Protestant church. Protestants are growing as a strong minority in Latin American countries and have always been common in Europe, where the Protestant movement began. Start here: http://www.lutheranworld.org/lwf/ The Lutherans seem to be the closest in nature to Catholicism, which makes sense when you consider that they were the first to break away and were conservative compared to the Protestant movements that arose later.
Ex-Catholics who are no longer Christian but still believe in the God of the Jewish Bible : Join a Jewish Synagogue. Most Jewish groups make it difficult to join, so you may have to spend a long time convincing the rabbi that you are sincere and willing to follow the Jewish rituals and standards. The Reform Jews seem to be the ones most likely to fit you, since they are not as dogmatic and stuck in the past as others. http://urj.org/ http://www.wupj.org/index.asp
Ex-Catholics who are theists and believe that prophets came after Jesus: Join an Islamic community or a Bahai comunity. Not just any Islamic or Bahai community, but ones that allow you to think for yourself. Look here: http://www.liberalislam.net/ or here: http://www.unitarianbahai.org/
Ex-Catholics that are deist or non-theist: The best option for you is to join a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church, since deists and non-theists are welcome there. http://www.uua.org/ There is even a ministry for those who do not live near a UU church: http://clf.uua.org/ Once you are established as a UU, you can freely explore other options without having to ever leave that congregation. There are even UU Christians, UU Jews, UU Pagans and UU Buddhists that have their own groups within the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The important thing is that you identify as anything other than Catholic and that if you have children they not be raised Catholic. If enough people around the world do this, the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church will be broken.
Universalism is the other half of the religious tradition known as Unitarian Universalism. I already dealt with the first half by denying the Trinity as a self-contradicting assertion:
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/there-is-no-trinity-period/
It is understandable that some people want to feel like they are better than others or more loved by God than others, but that is an appeal to the human ego that is destructive to human spirituality. There is nothing more vile than the idea that God would condemn anyone to eternal damnation in hell for believing in the “wrong” dogmas. Such extreme punishment could only be justified if there was some empirical way to discover the truth in religion, thus making it beyond dispute. But if that was the case, it wouldn’t even be religion at all; it would be SCIENCE.
In the late 1980s, I was a Christian and I was perfectly sincere about it. Then at the turn of this Century, I was a Baha’i and just as zealous about that. And in both cases, I have turned away from those religions because I found them to be flawed and unworthy of my allegiance, perhaps even completely false, as many do believe. But if I had died at either time, would it have been fair for God to condemn me for following a false religion?
Even if Christianity was the only true religion, the fact that it has been divided into thousands of competing sects, despite the fact that Christians are supposed to believe in one God and one savior, is enough to show that there are no “true” Christians. No matter what position you take, you are part of a minority in the world; Christians only make up about 1/4 of the population of the world. Is it logical to assume that God would condemn the vast majority of the world for not being Christian, especially when there is so much evidence that it is defended by outright fraud?
1900 years ago, Christians and Jews were a tiny minority in the world. In places like India, China, Japan, and the American continents, there was virtually no chance for people living there to hear and accept the teaching of either Bible based religion, while there were religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, or the various Pagan religions. Who could blame the people in those lands for following what they knew? It is easy to assume you have the only true faith when you have only that one faith in your community and do not know followers of other religions except through crude stereotypes. Once you get to know those followers as people, those stereotypes tend to break down. Exposure to those people breeds tolerance quite naturally.
Since there is no way to know what truth in religion is, there is no justification for the dogma that God damns anyone for what they believe or disbelieve. That claim is bigotry and thus is evil.
I just read something interesting in this article:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/4749/why_liberal_religious_arguments_fail/
I participated for a time in a Los Angeles-area peace and justice group, an interfaith group filled with good and righteous people. Following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was decided that we should be reaching out to area congregations to ask if we could provide them with guest speakers who would then tell the members of those congregations just how wrong and pointless the war and occupation was. There were few takers. Meanwhile, but on a separate track, this same group was establishing relationships with returning soldiers and military family members who opposed the war. I suggested that we might ask congregations whether they would care to hear from a service member or a military family member, someone who would simply tell their story, rather than hear from one of the well-briefed peaceniks. My suggestion was rejected, as this would have deprived the peaceniks of a chance to sound off about how wrong (how very wrong) George W. Bush and Don Rumsfeld had been in regard to principles of international law. I withdrew from the group shortly thereafter.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has given me a good reason to despise him and want him out of office: He is an anti-gay bigot.
The American Family Association (AFA), a virulent anti-gay hate group based in Tupelo, Miss., has agreed to pay for a national day of prayer being organized later this summer in Houston by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a longstanding ally to prominent figures in the anti-gay movement.
Eric Bearse, a spokesman for the event billed as “The Response: a Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis,” on Sunday told Reuters that Perry contacted the AFA a month ago “to call Americans together for a time of prayer.” The rally will be held Aug. 6 at Reliant Stadium, which holds nearly 72,000 people.
Neither Bearse nor Perry’s press office answered email requests for comment. But in a written statement, the governor “urged fellow governors to issue similar proclamations encouraging their constituents to pray that day for unity and righteousness.”
The AFA is one of the most strident voices spreading malicious anti-LGBT propaganda. The group’s director of policy analysis, Bryan Fischer, claimed last year, “Homosexuality gave us Adolph [sic] Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.” He has proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior and advocated forcing gay men and lesbians into “reparative” therapy programs. More recently, Fischer wrote that gays were the leading perpetrators of hate crimes.
With a long history of close ties to the anti-gay movement, it’s no surprise Perry would associate himself so closely with the AFA. In his 10 years as governor, he has waged a fight to keep “homosexual conduct” listed as a criminal offense in the state penal code – a law he has said is “appropriate.”
In 2005, while signing a bill to amend the state constitution to specifically prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying, Perry was joined on stage by Rob Parsley, a celebrity Pentecostal faith healer, who lauded the governor for “protecting the children of Texas from the gay agenda.” (The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately struck down the law.) Parsley offered a series of shocking statistics – for example, that only 1% of the LGBT population in American will die of old age. The numbers, in fact, were gross distortions pulled straight from pseudo-scientific studies by Dr. Paul Cameron, a crackpot psychologist and champion of the anti-gay crusade.
“The Response” is being promoted as an event to bring America together at a time of widespread natural disaster and economic turmoil. But, more likely, it’s a response to the hard-fought advances in the gay community, most notably the pending repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Materials promoting the event have said as much. “Our nation is at a crossroads. … The youth of America are in grave peril economically, socially, and, most of all, morally,” a description on the event’s website reads. “As a nation, we must come together, call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles. … There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.”
Whatever happened to church-state separation as mandated by the First Amendment? It is a lie told by religious extremists that it involves only the government not interfering with religion. If religion is allowed to interfere with government, than the rights of those who do not share the religion are still being violated. The 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause must also apply to people of all religious affiliations or even those of none, or it is meaningless!
Some people just don’t get it, like this guy who commented on the news report:
William C. said,
on June 7th, 2011 at 10:35 am
I don’t get it. How does the SPLC take themselves seriously when they consider groups like the American Family Association, a peaceful Christian group dedicated to preserving traditional moral values, to be equals with evil, racist, violent hate groups like the KKK and neo-nazi skinheads?
The first reply to him was
Linnea said,
on June 7th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
OK, William, here’s the deal. Maybe you haven’t bothered to read the SPLC’s definition of a hate group. Here it is in a nutshell: any group that persistently uses known falsehoods to attack and demonize a group because of their class characteristics (ie, race, religion, sexual orientation,etc.) Groups do not necessarily have to engage in violence to be named hate groups. The AFA and other religious groups do indeed engage in spreading known falsehoods about GLBT people, and in some cases, persist in nasty, groundless name-calling. You really need to do some homework before you make yourself look this dumb on a public forum.
I then stepped in:
Dale Husband said,
on June 7th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
William C. is typical of people with religious delusions and double standards.
First, there is nothing peaceful about anti-gay bigotry, so the AFA is NOT peaceful just because you are Christian and share some of its views. Bigotry is bigotry, and that some passages in the Bible condone or even support that bigotry doesn’t make it any less destructive. If the Bible openly supported racism, would you think racist groups are peaceful? Don’t you understand that KKK members also claim to be Christians?
Dale Husband, the Honorable Skeptic
At first glance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormon Church, seems highly successful. It was founded in the early 19th Century and has spread over the world. Somewhat. Continue reading
One of the greatest disappointments in my life as a follower of the Baha’i Faith (1997-2004) was observing a couple I’d been close to go through a bitter divorce and the fallout that resulted from that. First, read this for a general background:
I sometimes wonder why more and more people in the USA don’t convert to atheism, seeing what religious bigots do when allowed to run riot. If I were God, I would have struck down this one, Bradlee Dean, immediately for his opening prayer at the Minnesota State legislature. He said:
“I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus’ name.” [Emphasis mine]
See for yourself!
In short, this was a swipe at Barack Obama, implying that he isn’t a Christian. Since it is common knowledge that Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ, that preacher just told a bald-faced lie while saying a prayer to God. And in my judgement, that makes him a blasphemer.
Even the Republican Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Kurt Zellers, was offended, and he stated that Dean would be banned from ever appearing there again.
I am neither a Jew nor a Christian, but I find it ironic that many Christians insist that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, considering that Jesus did not teach that and indeed seemed to indicate that fallible MEN made some parts of it.
Matthew 19:3-9
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
This passage strikes at the very heart of fundamentalist dogma, that the entire Bible from the first verse in Genesis to the last verse of Revelation, was revealed by God and has absolute authority over men. Of course, if you are an Orthodox Jew, you would naturally take offense at anyone overturning a law of the Torah. But often Christian sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses also fall prey to excessive legalism, which Jesus denied! If certain laws in the Torah were made by Moses, not God, why not allow for the possibility that other passages, even in the New Testament, were also made by men for a specific time and people, not by God for all peoples and all times? How can we tell?
We can’t, which is why Biblical authority is a concept we need to discard.
This is the direct sequel to:
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/atheists-shrieking-about-the-aaas/
Once again, P Z Myers and Jerry Coyne have decided to push for the elimination of all mentioning of religion in scientific organizations, including the NCSE (National Center for Science Education, the American organization defending evolution) and the BCSE (British Centre for Science Education, the version of the NCSE in the United Kingdom).
Open letter to the NCSE and BCSE
Dear comrades:Although we may diverge in our philosophies and actions toward religion, we share a common goal: the promulgation of good science education in Britain and America—indeed, throughout the world. Many of us, like myself and Richard Dawkins, spend a lot of time teaching evolution to the general public. There’s little doubt, in fact, that Dawkins is the preeminent teacher of evolution in the world. He has not only turned many people on to modern evolutionary biology, but has converted many evolution-deniers (most of them religious) to evolution-accepters.
Nevertheless, your employees, present and former, have chosen to spend much of their time battling not creationists, but evolutionists who happen to be atheists. This apparently comes from your idea that if evolutionists also espouse atheism, it will hurt the cause of science education and turn people away from evolution. I think this is misguided for several reasons, including a complete lack of evidence that your idea is true, but also your apparent failure to recognize that creationism is a symptom of religion (and not just fundamentalist religion), and will be with us until faith disappears. That is one reason—and, given the pernicious effect of religion, a minor one—for the fact that we choose to fight on both fronts.
The official policy of your organizations—certainly of the NCSE—is apparently to cozy up to religion. You have “faith projects,” you constantly tell us to shut up about religion, and you even espouse a kind of theology which claims that faith and science are compatible. Clearly you are going to continue with these activities, for you’ve done nothing to change them in the face of criticism. And your employees, past and present, will continue to heap invective on New Atheists and tar people like Richard Dawkins with undeserved opprobrium.
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks. I don’t expect them to abate, but I’d like your organizations to recognize this: you have lost many allies, including some prominent ones, in your attacks on atheism. And I doubt that those attacks have converted many Christians or Muslims to the cause of evolution. This is a shame, because we all recognize that the NCSE has done some great things in the past and, I hope, will—like the new BCSE—continue do great things in the future.
There is a double irony in this situation. First, your repeated and strong accusations that, by criticizing religion, atheists are alienating our pro-evolution allies (liberal Christians), has precisely the same alienating effect on your allies: scientists who are atheists. Second, your assertion that only you have the requisite communication skills to promote evolution is belied by the observation that you have, by your own ham-handed communications, alienated many people who are on the side of good science and evolution. You have lost your natural allies. And this is not just speculation, for those allies were us, and we’re telling you so.
Sincerely,
Jerry Coyne
Let’s look at some excerpts from this open letter:
There’s little doubt, in fact, that Dawkins is the preeminent teacher of evolution in the world. He has not only turned many people on to modern evolutionary biology, but has converted many evolution-deniers (most of them religious) to evolution-accepters.
Note that Coyne does not specify that Dawkins has converted all these former evolution-deniers into atheists.
Nevertheless, your employees, present and former, have chosen to spend much of their time battling not creationists, but evolutionists who happen to be atheists.
How so? By not openly supporting atheism?
you have lost many allies, including some prominent ones, in your attacks on atheism.
HA HA HA HA HA HA! So not affirming atheism is the same as attacking it? REALLY?! Show me ONE official statement by the NCSE or the BCSE that attacks or denies atheism. Just one!
your repeated and strong accusations that, by criticizing religion, atheists are alienating our pro-evolution allies (liberal Christians), has precisely the same alienating effect on your allies: scientists who are atheists.
Coyne, you are alienated only because you are so convinced that only atheism is true. But that has nothing to do with teaching science. The fact remains that many children from Christian backgrounds will be learning evolution in schools and if they see a conflict between evolution and the Bible, they will remain Creationists rather than give up their faith and accept evolution. The efforts at accommodation by the NCSE and the BCSE are intended to show that you can choose to be religious and deal with science as it is also. It is YOU that is being intolerant, Coyne! It is YOU that choose to be alienated. You can still advocate atheism on your blog while promoting evolution too. No one in the NCSE or the BCSE is saying you cannot. So what is the problem?
Then P Z says on his blog:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/the_bcse_blows_up.php
How often do we have to repeat ourselves? There is no goal of turning the NCSE or the BCSE into an atheist organization; we think having an organization that is honestly neutral on the religious issue is extremely useful in advancing the cause of good science education for all. We want the NCSE/BCSE to support neither atheism nor religion.
You know what? The atheists in this argument have a crystal-clear understanding of the difference between atheism and secularism, and are saying that the science education organizations should be secular. It’s these sloppy accommodationists who have allowed liberal christianity to become their default position who have violated the distinction.
First, no one is asking Myers and other atheists to repeat themselves, so that is just rhetorical crap. Second, the NCSE has made clear its own religious neutrality.
What is NCSE’s religious position?
None. The National Center for Science Education is not affiliated with any religious organization or belief. We and our members enthusiastically support the right of every individual to hold, practice, and advocate their beliefs, religious or non-religious. Our members range from devout practitioners of several religions to atheists, with many shades of belief in between. What unites them is a conviction that science and the scientific method, and not any particular religious belief, should determine science curriculum. (Emphasis mine)
Sorry, but until atheists become the vast majority of American and British people, the screaming about accommodation by atheists is pointless. I just don’t accept it. If the atheists wish to have all science organizations never mention religions or treat any religious people with respect again, they can push for that. And once they get their way, the political support for scientific organizations will most likely dry up. And the only ones who gain from that would be Creationists. The atheist fanatics are giving them exactly the talking points they need to fight longer and harder the public relations war over science education!
Please support both the NCSE and the BCSE. Here are their websites:
Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, with about 2 billion followers all over the world. Islam is the second most popular religion, with over a billion followers. Part of the reason Christianity is larger is because it is older, since it is about 2000 years old, as compared with Islam being only 1400 years old.
Another reason Christianity is more popular is because of its association with imperialism. First, it took over the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, the religion continued as the dominant ideology of the Byzantine Empire, which was a direct offshoot of the Roman one. Later, the Arabs built a vast empire using Islam as their unifying force, challenging the Byzantines. Finally, the Turks, another Islamic power, destroyed the Byzantine Empire.
Then the European powers spread their empires all over the world, taking Christianity with them. Islam remained relatively weak until two things happened to make it more powerful: European imperialism fell apart and oil was discovered in most parts of the Middle East. Suddenly, the Arabs became extremely rich due to their oil revenues, and with that wealth came the ability to spread Islam around the world. But in Europe, Christianity declined as the people became increasingly secular. The tragic events of World War II probably did more to destroy Europeans’ faith than anything else. Today, the USA is the most powerful Christian dominated nation in the world, but it is still secular in its government. And even here, religious influence is slowly declining.
I suspect that within another generation, Islam will surpass Christianity as the most popular world religion, but its power cannot last long, because oil is a nonrenewable resource. And when that oil runs out, the economies of the Middle Eastern states that depend on oil will break down, and so will Islam.
What can freethinkers, atheists, and secular humanists do to overcome this situation? They must do everything possible to end the dependence on oil, and indeed all other fossil fuels, and establish societies based on renewable and sustainable sources of energy such as wind, water, the sun and geothermal sources. Once at least some parts of the world are free from needing resources that are doomed to run out, we will have even less need for religions like Christianity and Islam.
For years, I’ve had a YouTube channel, but lacking a webcam I was unable to make actual videos. So I was content to favorite videos by others and make comments. But that all changed when I finally bought a webcam after several months of hesitation and learned how to edit files on my computer to make videos too.
Here is my first, made purely to test the systems.
Satisfied with that result, I produced this one a couple of days later about one of my favorite topics:
And this will be just the beginning!
I like a lot of Green Day’s songs, but the one I love the most is “Jesus of Suburbia”. It seems, more than any other song I’ve ever heard, to spell out the shallow, hypocritical, and self-serving nature of mainstream American Christianity. Continue reading
Cover via Amazon
For many centuries, all clergy in the Roman Catholic Church have been required to be celibate, despite the total absence of any scriptural basis for this policy. Indeed, there is a clear statement in the New Testament against it!
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%203&version=NIV
This is a bio of Answers in Genesis “scientist” Georgia Purdom.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/g_purdom.asp
Quotes from it will be in red and my responses will be in green.
Dr. Georgia Purdom is a compelling and dynamic lecturer and well qualified to speak on the relevance of Genesis to the issue of biblical authority.
So she has the gift of gab. You need that to be a successful preacher, but that has nothing to do with being an effective scientist.
She is the only female Ph.D. scientist engaged in full-time speaking and research for a biblical creationist organization in North America.
This actually violates Biblical teachings! 1 Timothy 2:12 – “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
Dr. Purdom states, “A proper understanding of Genesis is very important because it is foundational to biblical authority and a Christian worldview. It’s about so much more than the creation/evolution controversy. It’s about the truthfulness and authority of God’s Word.”
Sure, as long as you ignore that verse from 1 Timothy. Or maybe she thinks it is not God’s Word? After all, it IS in the Bible. So can she, her boss Ken Ham, or other Creationist advocates specify what parts of the Bible are the Word of God and what are not?
First, read this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709598
Japan’s most powerful earthquake since records began has struck the north-east coast, triggering a massive tsunami.
Behold the arrogance of this Christian writer, Dr. Hugh Ross:
http://www.reasons.org/philosophyreligion/atheism/barriers-salvation
In the summer and fall of 2004, I gradually came to the conviction that the Baha’i Faith was no longer worthy of my allegiance. Realizing that I had to remove myself from that community outright as a matter of honor, I wrote the following letter:
To the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States,
After years of investigation and soul-searching, I have finally come to the sad understanding that I can no longer bring myself to believe in Baha’u’llah or any of the institutions established in His name, including the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice. I am totally convinced that the Baha’i Faith is doomed to fail in its mission to bring peace, unity, and a Golden Age to humanity and I therefore resign from my past membership in the Faith. Goodbye.
Regretfully,
Dale Husband
After a brief discussion with a Muslim friend in Facebook about religious tolerance, I noticed she often used the word “revert” in reference to herself and certain other Muslims. I’d never heard of that term before, so I googled the phrase “Muslim reverts”. I then found this:
http://www.revertmuslims.com/glossary.html
Revert A person who returns to a religion they previously had; Muslim custom is to apply this term to converts to Islam as well, on the grounds that Islam is the religion that every person was born into, but their parents made them another religion. (Emphasis mine)
Gee, I wonder where that delusion came from. As I stated earlier, I don’t accept that babies are born atheists either.
Some atheists have gone further and asserted that atheism merely means “lacking belief in a god”, but that is illogical since what would follow from that is all newborn babies would therefore be atheist (they are born with NO beliefs at all) and this actually makes the term atheist useless for statistical purposes as well. It is ideologically useful (you can thus argue that atheism is a child’s natural state and thus religious indoctrination violates the child’s “true” nature), but has no empirical foundation.
An empirical case against the idea that a person can be born a Muslim is that babies do not practice any of the five pillars of Islam from birth; they must be taught those rituals by their parents and others.
Why can’t babies just be considered blank slates? Then one could argue that the default religious position of any child would be the religion his parents agree to raise him in. I was raised a Southern Baptist, so that was my default position. I later deconverted from Christianity, joined a Unitarian Universalist church, converted to the Baha’i Faith, and finally reverted to Unitarian Universalism.
But no matter what else I do in my life, my past memberships in both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baha’i Faith will always be a part of my existence. As I told my Muslim friend: “I will pick fights with Christian extremists, atheist extremists, and even Muslim extremists. That’s because I figured out long ago that religion cannot be about objective truth, but about what fits your soul and identity. Whether there is one God, a billion gods, or no God, we all must live by what we know and can accept. To demand otherwise is to violate the very nature of what it means to be human.”
And to the end of my life, I know that my soul and my identity always will be linked to:
NOT ISLAM OR ANY DOGMATIC GOD-CENTERED RELIGION!
Many Christians are obsessed with converting the whole world to their religion, so any sign of even a slight decline in the membership of their denomination is disturbing to them. As an ex-Southern Baptist, such news about my former denomination is a joy to behold!
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100517/southern-baptists-still-marking-decline/
According to a newly released annual report, membership in the Southern Baptist Convention fell in 2009 by 0.42 percent to 16.16 million. That marks the third consecutive year of decline for a body that had previously bucked the shrinking trend of other denominations.
On a positive note, baptisms rose by 2.2 percent to 349,737, stemming a four-year decline.
Still, Southern Baptist Thom Rainer isn’t satisfied.
“The fact that more people were baptized this year than last year gives us a reason to hope we’re on the right path,” said Rainer, CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources which compiled the report. “At the same time, we as Southern Baptists continue to show signs of drifting from our historic commitment to evangelism, as reflected in the fact that it still takes 46 Southern Baptists to lead one person to faith in Christ.”
LifeWay Research president Ed Stetzer was also cautious in celebrating the higher number of baptisms.
“Every baptism is a person being obedient to the teachings of Christ, publicly professing new life in Christ. The fact that there are more baptisms is a good thing … yet … saying this year’s increase in baptisms is good news is like bragging your state moved from the 47th to 46th state in educational achievement. It’s better, but it’s not time for a parade.”
Stetzer pointed out that though there were more baptisms in 2009 compared to the previous year, the number was still the third lowest since 1993.
“It should break our hearts that this year’s baptism numbers are considered good news at all – it shows how far we have to go,” he said in a commentary Friday.
He also warned that if trends continue, the SBC won’t see membership numbers going back up any time soon. “Expect to hear ‘membership decline’ more times than ‘membership growth’ over the next few years,” he said.
The Southern Baptist Convention is currently considering major changes and reprioritization to get the denomination back on track toward the fulfilling of the Great Commission.
Earlier this month, the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force released the final draft of a report that includes a set of recommendations that will be voted on by delegates at an annual meeting next month. Southern Baptist leaders have urged fellow members to adopt the new vision in order to mobilize the SBC more effectively in reaching the lost.
Get a grip, Baptist leaders!
I was baptized into my Southern Baptist church in 1984. I had just turned 15 and knew NOTHING about Christian theology and history, so I was just blindly following my mother, her pastor and my friends. Then I deconverted from Christianity about five years later as a college student after reading the Bible, being exposed to Creationist literature, and finally getting to read the other side of the various issues in the library of the college I was attending at the time.
Did you know that the SBC began as a split from the Northern Baptists over slavery? And that the SBC is still almost entirely WHITE? I shudder to think how many Southern Baptist leaders supported the status quo of Jim Crow laws and regulations from the Civil War period to the 1960s. As a person who sees racism as evil, that’s reason enough to repudiate the SBC forever!
I think the reason the SBC claimed for so long to be the largest Protestant denomination in North America was because it never removes a person from its membership lists for non-attendance of Sunday worship services. But to me, that is dishonest. A person who hardly ever goes to church should not be counted as much a member as someone who attends every week for many years. But it is still a great way to inflate your church memberships to make your denomination look bigger and more influential than it really is. I wonder if I am still counted as a member of the SBC somewhere.
Millions of people can be baptized, but if most of those millions later leave the churches, as I did, then those baptisms are for nothing in the long run.
AAAS = The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
First, look at this:
http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2011/webprogram/Session2878.html
Evangelical Christians constitute approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population, and their influence on public policy is considerable. As a community with major concerns regarding science, ethics, and national priorities, its impact on science policy has been particularly significant, as in the case of stem cell research. Around such controversial issues, communication between science and evangelical Christianity has been hampered by limited appreciation of both the scientific facts and each others’ concerns. On the other hand, new models of positive engagement between these communities around global issues such as climate change is encouraging awareness and leading to science policies that benefit both science and society as a whole. As science progresses in other disciplines, evangelicals will continue to play a significant role, but their positions on many of these issues have not yet been fully formed. The opportunity thus exists to anticipate concerns and to develop a positive understanding that will benefit scientific advancement. One example is neuroscience, which has implications for both policy-making and religious understanding. Speakers will discuss their experiences with stem cell and climate change policy and explore how these experiences can inform engagement between the scientific and evangelical communities to benefit policies relating both to neuroscience and to science more generally.
Do you see ANYTHING there that attacks atheism or says that atheists have no business doing science?
Responses to this by atheist fanatics have been less than rational. Here is Jerry Coyne’s take on it:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/the-aaas-sells-out-to-christians/
No—here are the real losers: abortion doctors who are shot by evangelical Christians, women forced to bear unwanted babies because abortion is seen as sinful, gays who are either marginalized or demonized because evangelicals consider their thoughts and behaviors as sinful, children who are terrorized—and infused with lifelong guilt—by the concepts of sin and hell, women who must accept their status as a second-class gender. Even believers like Francis Collins, surely on the liberal end of the evangelical Christian spectrum, hold profoundly antiscientific beliefs. Collins, for example, can’t see how morality could have either evolved or developed in society unless it was a creation of God, and considers the “Moral Law” as profound evidence for the existence of God. To anyone working in anthropology or neuroscience, that claim is simply embarrassing!
The sooner that religion goes away, the sooner these ills will abate. “Dialoguing” with evangelical Christians (and granted, not all of them hold the beliefs I’ve just mentioned) only enables superstition—a superstition that, one would think, would be resolutely opposed by a scientific organization like the AAAS. Remember that Leshner is the CEO of that organization and the executive publisher of one of the world’s two most prestigious scientific journals.
It is not evangelical Christianity that causes anyone to shoot abortion doctors, but the worst form of hypocrisy. That sort of hyperbole from Coyne is prejudicial and disturbing. Couldn’t it be possible that rather than corrupting science, the purpose of the conference is to inform evangelicals about how science can persuade them to moderate extreme positions they otherwise might have taken?
P Z Myers seems to be playing good cop to Jerry Coyle’s bad cop.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/when_will_the_aaas_stop_pander.php
I don’t think Nick Matzke can even imagine what a group of secularists would find useful at AAAS — he’s projecting quite a bit, and presuming that such a session would be as one-sided and blinkered as these sessions the evangelical Christians are running. They wouldn’t. I’m as antagonistic to religion as Coyne is, maybe more so (hey, there’s another session possibility: “Atheists Roast Christianity,” where we all vie with each other to insult religion the most), but unlike what the Matzkes of the world assume, we are actually aware of the political situation.
If I were in charge of organizing such a beast, here’s what I’d look for. I’d want to have an honest religionist or philosopher/historian of religion there to give a talk on key doctrinal conflicts: what are they? How do modern Christians and Muslims and Jews resolve them? They are there, of course: there are major points like teleology in the universe and mind-body dualism that are unsupported or even contradicted by science. He wouldn’t have to endorse or oppose any of those points, but simply, clearly, explain where the conflicts lie.
I’d want someone to discuss secular approaches to school and public education. These do NOT involve teaching atheism in the schools. I’m a big fat noisy atheist myself, but when I get into the classroom to teach one of those controversial topics like evolution, my atheism is not an issue, and I don’t tell the students they have to abandon their gods to be a scientist. What the attendees at AAAS do not need is someone telling them how wonderful Christianity is; what would be useful is someone explaining how to teach honest, evidence-based science without compromising their principles, no matter what they are.
I’d want someone with political and legal expertise to discuss what the law actually says about science education. The perfect person would be someone like Barry Lynn, or Sean Faircloth, or Eddie Tabash — a person who could lay out exactly what kind of political tack scientists should take with legislators to keep the taint of religious bias out of support for science.
Actually, the atheist-run version of such a session would be what a science organization should want: instead of some half-assed stab at rapprochement with clearly unscientific, irrational, traditional metaphysics, and instead of the tribal war council the accommodationists imagine, it would be a rational discussion of how secular scientists (which would include religious scientists who are committed to keeping their beliefs out of the lab and classroom) can get their jobs done in a crazily religious country. As long as these pious zealots are left in charge, though, that’s not what we’re getting.
I can go to atheist meetings to get my rah-rah on for godlessness; people like Leshner, the organizer of the currently planned come-to-Jebus meeting, can go to church and get their idiot-ology affirmed there. An AAAS symposium ought to be actually accomplishing something for all of the members of the organization, not just the atheists and especially not just the deluded apologists under loyalty oaths who want to Christianize science.
It would seem that the only thing atheists like Coyne and Myers want with the AAAS is for religion to be mentioned only to highlight its flaws. But that’s not what science is about! Science, in its pure form, ignores all religions and their beliefs. The problem is that scientists do not practice science in its pure form and indeed, no one does…..because they are human. A person who does science and nothing else wouldn’t be human at all, but a robot with no emotions or sense of appreciation for anything non-scientific.
Religion is non-scientific, but only some expressions of religion are anti-scientific. That Coyne and Myers do not seem to understand that distinction and paint anything non-scientific as unworthy of serious discussion in major science organizations only shows their prejudice. I’d hate to see them in an art museum.
Look at this article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110131/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt_protest
CAIRO – Egypt’s most prominent democracy advocate took up a bullhorn Sunday and called for President Hosni Mubarak to resign, speaking to thousands of protesters who defied a curfew for a third night. Fighter jets streaked low overhead and police returned to the capital’s streets — high-profile displays of authority over a situation spiraling out of control.
Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei’s appearance in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square underscored the jockeying for leadership of the mass protest movement that erupted seemingly out of nowhere in the past week to shake the Arab world’s most populous nation.
<snip>
Asked if Washington supports Mubarak as Egypt’s leader, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton avoided a direct answer, telling Fox News: “We have been very clear that we want to see a transition to democracy, and we want to see the kind of steps taken that will bring that about.”
<snip>
The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to establish an Islamist state in Egypt, has made some statements that it was willing to let ElBaradei act as point man for the movement. But it also appeared to be moving for a more prominent role after lying low when the protests first erupted.
On Sunday evening, the presence of overtly pious Muslims in the square was conspicuous, suggesting a significant Brotherhood representation. Hundreds performed the sunset prayers. Veiled women prayed separately.
A senior Brotherhood leader, Essam el-Erian, told The Associated Press he was heading to Tahrir Square to meet with other opposition leaders. El-Erian told an Egyptian TV station that the Brotherhood is ready to contact the army for a dialogue, calling the military “the protector of the nation.”
Clinton suggested there were U.S. concerns over the possibility of the Brotherhood seizing direction of the movement. She warned against a takeover resembling the one in Iran, with a “small group that doesn’t represent the full diversity of Egyptian society” seizing control and imposing its ideological beliefs.
Indeed, if the Muslim Brotherhood does seize control of Egypt, it could easily become just as destructive to Egypt as the Taliban was to Afghanistan before it was overthrown in 2001.
The protesters should be supporting freedom, justice and peace. Any ideology that is based on religious bigotry is the antithesis of these ideals. The people of Iran replaced one tyrant, the Shah, with another, the Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1979, and now Iran’s government is a fraud, supported by rigged and phony elections.
We must also remember that Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar El Sadat, was assassinated by army members opposed to peace with Israel. Most likely they were similar to the Muslim Brotherhood members in their political views.
I don’t care if one chooses to follow Islam as a personal religion, but I urge Muslims to stop trying to make it the basis of a government!
Take a look at this interactive display of the relative sizes of things in the universe, going from subatomic levels all the way to the entire universe itself.
http://htwins.net/scale/index.html
Now, look at this alternative scenario:
http://htwins.net/scale/wrong.html
Look ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet this claim is equally ridiculous: that the Earth, instead of being 4 1/2 billion years old, is probably about 10,000 years old.
How wrong is that? First review this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale
Then see this:
And this:
And this:
Here’s the YouTube channel those videos came from. There are many more!
Science is based on the idea that there is a definite order and consistency to the universe we live in. So if there are patterns to nature and laws to its operations, then we can investigate those patterns and laws, work out from them the nature of the universe itself, and thus increase our knowledge of it.
Creationists will deny this. They claim instead that the only “truth” that matters is what some ancient scriptures say, but that is an absurdity. Anyone can make up scriptures. But only God could have made the universe itself. If God is a consistent being, then the laws of physics and chemistry must be applicable to all of it, throughout space and time. Thus, even if you believe in God, you must conclude from the study of the universe that the timelines and descriptions of certain events given in the Book of Genesis cannot be literally true. Otherwise, if you don’t believe in a consistent God, then you might as well believe in a chaotic, senseless universe like the one in the second link I posted here.
And that is exactly why I call both Young-Earth Creationism and Biblical fundamentalism blasphemous dogmas.
Someone put the most annoying comment on my blog for me to moderate, and after I read it (and rejected it) , I found his own blog and saw that his comment on mine was nothing more than a copy and paste job from one of his blog entries. Actually, the ONLY entry he made on his blog, at least so far. Here’s a link to it:
http://mysticsannonymous.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/the-making-of-a-modern-day-mystic/
You can go there to read his nonsense, but you won’t find it here. Indeed, I don’t intend to approve ANY comments from this pest.
You can write an entire novel of crap and it will still be crap, just as much as a comment of only one or two sentences that are stupid. If you cannot deal with the actual issues I raised about the Baha’i Faith, then a story about you falling in love with a Baha’i and converting to her religion only proves you are shallow-minded!
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
The real issue is of honesty, not what one beleives. I don’t care if you bow down and worship a blue bull, as long as you don’t LIE to us about how that bull is not only your god, but is somehow a god to everyone else and that there is credible scientific and scholarly evidence to support your dogmas about the bull.
Anyone can read the Bible with his own eyes and mind and see that it is chock full of historical errors, contradictions, logical failings, and absurdities. So what do Christian apologists do to explain them away? Word gaming, nothing more! Once you start down that perverse path, with no test in reality, there need be no end to it. One lie is defended by another lie, and then you tell yet more lies to support the earlier ones. It just becomes a habit that is impossible to break, because doing so would make your whole case fall apart and you would lose your blind and ignorant following which gives you your power!
That’s how religious apologetics works, and Creationism is merely religious apologetics with scientific terminology. Nothing more.