Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
6/29/11
5/24/11
School Vouchers Pay For Religion At Expense Of Math
The 'Christian' Dogma Pushed by Religious Schools That Are Supported by Your Tax Dollars...
If you live in a state with a voucher or corporate tax credit program funding "school choice," your state's tax dollars are funding the teaching of religious supremacism.
Are your state’s tax dollars funding the teaching of religious supremacism and bigotry? What about creationism? The answer is undoubtedly yes, if you live in a state with a voucher or corporate tax credit program funding “school choice."
Religious schools across the nation are receiving public funds through voucher and corporate tax credit programs. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of these schools use Protestant fundamentalist textbooks that teach not only creationism, but also a religious supremacist worldview. They offer a shocking spin on politics, history and human rights.
by Rachel Tabachnick via Alternet
1/21/11
Quote Of The Day: USM Special Ops Are "Protectors Of The Christians" Edition
Seymour Hersh via Foreign Policy"What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over. Many of them [key branches of the U.S. military are being led by Christian fundamentalist "crusaders" who are determined to "turn mosques into cathedrals."] are members of Opus Dei. They do see what they're doing...it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
9/28/10
Atheists Know More About Religion Than You
A new Pew survey on religion in America finds that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be well-versed about different religions' beliefs and practices than people who profess a belief in those religions. For example, atheists and agnostics are more likely to know that during Communion (Catholicism's central rite), the wafer and wine are meant to transubstantiate into the literal flesh and blood of Christ -- they aren't merely symbolic, as 40% of Catholics believe. Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him).BB
8/15/10
Quote Of The Day: Sully And Ilk Still Love Catholic Church Edition
The church under Wojtila and Ratzinger took both paths, but the one, alas, has slowly eclipsed the other - until the sex abuse scandal tipped the scales to a near total collapse of moral authority in so many places, Ireland most spectacularly.[emphasis mine] Sully
That's right, near total collapse of moral authority. Near.
Andrew Sullivan is a smart guy. That he continues to be astonished at his church is, well, astonishing.
8/14/10
I've Been Busy
I know. I have been neglecting you, still. Look, my kid, the Frustrated Son (who isn't really frustrated at all) is preparing for his bar mitzvah on the 28th, so the Frustrated Parents, who, like over half of once-married Americans, are not married, must do some cleaning. Mom has the better house, so it will be there.
We spent the day weeding Mom's yard. It has never been done. Ever. And there are blackberry bushes, and other prickly things. But, being poor, we can't rent the ballroom at the St. Francis, so we need to have the shindig at Mom's house. We needed to cleanup because it was all overgrown--nowhere to sit or set up folding tables.
As the son watched me sweat, I ripped out about 60 gallons worth of foliage, dead and thorny, with only minor injuries. He watched his mom prune the overgrown tree and ivy that was covering the stairs down to the house. I am being unfair. He didn't just watch. He helped, then went inside to play guitar, then came out again, and then went in again. He had a great day!
I will finish the yard tomorrow and next weekend. I think I need to spread some wood-chips or something to cover what is now just dirt. It can be temporary. I have seen some wood-chips for free on Craigslist.
We have to buy ten pounds of cream cheese?! And because lox is so expensive, we will put it in the cream cheese. Maybe we need only 8 eight pounds of cream cheese--5 w/lox and 3 plain. We talked about cream cheese for a long time. It's the little things.
As long as we don't bring anything mammalian into the temple kitchen, we are good. It's a reform synagogue, so they can interpret the laws of Kashrut however they see fit.
My father used to tell me a story of his grandfather who was a rabbi (who really knows if the story is true, and I don't care) in a shtetl. Due to the fact that the community was poor, it often occurred that some form of food was available, but not necessarily kosher. Great-grandpa was willing to bless just about anything so his community wouldn't starve. My dad, a bacon eater like the son and me, said rabbi gramps would bless a pig if that's all there was to eat. Life is worth more than religion, or something.
I come by my atheism via bloodline, apparently.
So, for the next couple of weeks, I will be blogging a bit less.
We spent the day weeding Mom's yard. It has never been done. Ever. And there are blackberry bushes, and other prickly things. But, being poor, we can't rent the ballroom at the St. Francis, so we need to have the shindig at Mom's house. We needed to cleanup because it was all overgrown--nowhere to sit or set up folding tables.
As the son watched me sweat, I ripped out about 60 gallons worth of foliage, dead and thorny, with only minor injuries. He watched his mom prune the overgrown tree and ivy that was covering the stairs down to the house. I am being unfair. He didn't just watch. He helped, then went inside to play guitar, then came out again, and then went in again. He had a great day!
I will finish the yard tomorrow and next weekend. I think I need to spread some wood-chips or something to cover what is now just dirt. It can be temporary. I have seen some wood-chips for free on Craigslist.
We have to buy ten pounds of cream cheese?! And because lox is so expensive, we will put it in the cream cheese. Maybe we need only 8 eight pounds of cream cheese--5 w/lox and 3 plain. We talked about cream cheese for a long time. It's the little things.
As long as we don't bring anything mammalian into the temple kitchen, we are good. It's a reform synagogue, so they can interpret the laws of Kashrut however they see fit.
My father used to tell me a story of his grandfather who was a rabbi (who really knows if the story is true, and I don't care) in a shtetl. Due to the fact that the community was poor, it often occurred that some form of food was available, but not necessarily kosher. Great-grandpa was willing to bless just about anything so his community wouldn't starve. My dad, a bacon eater like the son and me, said rabbi gramps would bless a pig if that's all there was to eat. Life is worth more than religion, or something.
I come by my atheism via bloodline, apparently.
So, for the next couple of weeks, I will be blogging a bit less.
7/24/10
Quote Of The Day: Blasphemy Rocks Edition
So basically, God created men he later had to control by having other men kill the men who he created in the first place all the while knowing that they would do what they did because he is all knowing. And this is all ok, because God has a reason and we shouldn't question it.Random Facebook comment
7/19/10
Monday Cartoon Fun: Mel "Foulmouth, Racist, Catholic, Misogynist" Gibson Edition
Update: Some Chris Hitchens on Mel:
We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.
6/9/10
5/23/10
Praying Before Legislating: America's Oxymorons
I always get uneasy when I see prayer in a government office. America's Constitution makes the separation explicit. Why the fuck are government employees praying to Jesus in a government building as they begin government business? A new Facebook group may be in order: Stop Praying At Government Meetings. Someone go start it.
Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar opens debate on new social studies standards with a politically divisive prayer on May 21, 2010.
5/21/10
Everybody Draw Mohammad Day
Here are the top 3 cartoons submitted for Everybody Draw Mohammad Day:
The homage to Rene Magritte below states "This is not a pipe. This is Muhammed," playing with the surrealist's famous statement about the necessary disjuncture between a picture and the thing it seeks to represent. Just as the drawing is not a pipe (it's a drawing of a pipe), it cannot be Mohammed even as it insists it is. Even more, it is plainly not even a drawing of Mohammed or of any human figure.
Similarly, the invocation of the popular Where's Waldo? series forces the viewer to ask Where's Mohammed?, and to begin a hunt for a figure in the midst of an overstuffed scene. One assumes the black-robed character in the upper right-hand quadrant of the image is our quarry, but then what does it mean to confer on a small dot any significance whatsoever?
And the winner:
...each of the images forces the viewer to actively participate not simply in the creation of meaning but of actually constructing the image itself. This is clearest in our grand prize winner, the image below, which pushes iman and infidel alike to do the work that would condemn them to death under the most extreme reading of injunctions against representing Mohammed.
There is a deeper lesson here: Connect the dots and discover that we all must be Spartacus on Everybody Draw Mohammad Day. And that in a free society, every day is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
5/19/10
Religion: What Is It Good For?
From Jonathan Turley come some allegations of abuse by Scientologists. Do religions exist so adults can abuse people? Sure seems to be an important part of religion these days...
5/17/10
5/3/10
Religion Makes You Stupid? Research Suggests
Hearing prayer shuts off believers' brain activityMore at the link.
When some religiously devout people hear a charismatic healer speak the word of god , the regions of their brains involved in skeptical thinking and vigilance appear to shut down. Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues scanned the brains of Pentecostalists while they listened to recorded prayers from non-Christians, "ordinary" Christians, and a healer. The brain activity changed only in response to prayers they were told came from the healer. According to Schjødt, the same deactivation may occur in response to the words of physicians, parents, politicians, and other charismatic leaders. The researchers published their results in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. From New Scientist:
Parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which play key roles in vigilance and scepticism when judging the truth and importance of what people say, were deactivated when the subjects listened to a supposed healer. Activity diminished to a lesser extent when the speaker was supposedly a normal Christian.
Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.
4/26/10
All The Evidence Of God
This is a complete list of the scientific evidence of evolution being a hoax, and of God’s existence.
4/23/10
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