I tip my hat to the students of the University of Chicago, who nicely illustrate the appropriate response to the Westboro Baptist Church: mockery. They were accompanied down the street by a group of students mocking the WBC’s message. The students held a sign reading “Figs Doom Nations” and planted themselves across the street from the WBC, drawing from a… Read more →
Tag: religion
Minor Meditations On Religion and Neurobiology
There’s lots to think about in the write up on recent studies into the relation between neural wiring and the concept religion at the New Scientist. A really simplified version would be that the brain has a couple of built in biases that make the concept of religion arise almost naturally. One is that we have different cognitive systems for… Read more →
To treat with excessive leniency, generosity, or consideration
I was not particularly indulgent with the Catholic Church and Pope Inquisitor, when I last discussed plenary indulgences on here. (Quoting Hitchens doesn’t count.) I see that the indulgences are newsworthy again, with some discussion this week of a piece in the Times. I’m mostly amused that part of the point of the piece is that most Catholics apparently don’t… Read more →
New Humanist Religion Trumps
Another of the magazines I pick up every couple of months is New Humanist. I haven’t actually picked up the latest issue yet, but based on checking out their God Trumps piece online, I really do want to try to grab a copy before it’s too late–just in case they’ve got got cardstock versions of these things in the actual… Read more →
Way To Go America
Did you read where earlier this month, as part of the celebration of the anniversary of the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, France and the Netherlands sponsored a new non-binding UN declaration extending the rights guaranteed in the UDHR to homosexual and transgender people? Out of the 192 countries in the UN, only 66 signed. This is perhaps… Read more →
Utterly random points
So, I thought the barbecue sauce guy was weird, but he has possibly been surpassed by the eggbeater bandit. New Walter Jon Williams books are automatic buys in this house (as you know if you’ve been reading for a while), and now he’s not just selling me his books, he’s putting anime on my Ziplist. I may have mentioned that… Read more →
It doesn’t matter if it’s good, it’s still genius.
So, we know that I like Revelations, especially some of the bits at the end, and especially including God’s no-modifications open license. We also know that I like Hal Duncan, and especially when he’s being his most over-the-top flagrantly intellectual. You might not know that I have a sentimental affection for historical surrealists and Burroughs, and thus, by extension for… Read more →
Aside
Also officially on The List: The Salvation Army. (Note to self–remember this for the next time someone starts off on “faith-based initiatives” and public funding.)
Aside
So, if someone told me I would enjoy reading a short fiction piece entitled Talking To God, I would be skeptical. If they told me it was found on a site entitled “The Ragged Trousered Philosopher“, I might be more inclined to believe them. And I would have been right to do so. Good piece. And I intend to explore the site more fully. (And, to look into the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as well–the snippets of that at the site, about the Causes of Poverty, are quite interesting.)
Web Crack For Intellectuals
Wikipedia is one of the best things humanity has yet invented for allowing us to use up any extra time we have hanging around. As an added bonus, this time comes with a putative “educational value” benefit, which makes it easy to justify the time and avoid guilt over it. One example of how this might happen: you could go… Read more →
Religion and Spirituality
I got into a huge debate today about the distinction between religion and spirituality, and the relative worth of the two concepts. Instead of boring you with more of my cocky atheism, I’ll just quote a Zen story that I think captures the whole thing: The Real Miracle When Bankei was preaching at Ryumon temple, a Shinshu priest, who believed… Read more →
They way they are supposed to.
Since 2001 I’ve had less use for Christopher Hitchens than I used to. But hey, I’ve got even less use for Pope Inquisitor and his attempts to pull the Roman Catholic Church backwards in time. So if Hitchens wants to get snarky on the practice of indulgences, as he does in the latest Free Inquiry, I’m going to enjoy it… Read more →
Well, colour me shocked.
It turns out there’s a party running in our federal election who I am even more opposed to than the ReformConservatives. Yes, I just found out today about the Christian Heritage Party. Apparently they’ve been around since 1988, but they’ve never even showed up on my radar before. Since they’ve usually only run candidates in less than 1/6 of the… Read more →
Sunday Night Gallimaufry
You know the drill, this is the miscellaneous tab closing ceremony. Since I’m tired of politics today, there will be none in this list. I have had several discussions about this recent article on a particular form of elective surgery. All that I can conclude from these discussions is that I have different aesthetic than many of the people I’ve… Read more →
Aside
Man, there’s some stuff in the Bible that’s really not for kids. I’m not even talking about the rules in Leviticus, or the LSD trip in Revelations. Do the fundamentalists know about this?
