Religion

Oh, Is It Blasphemy Day?

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

Taking enmellishment’s advice:

  • I don’t pay a lot of attention to these events.
  • Nonetheless, if you think your belief is sooooo much awesomer than the thousands or millions of competing beliefs out there, let it stand up on its own without government protection.
  • Religion is a propped-up means of saying “STFU! I’m better than you!”
  • Rebecca Watson has been awesome in the way she handled “Elevatorgate” from beginning to, well, now at least. I doubt that will change by the time it ends.
  • It is highly amusing that the principles of radical feminism are still considered radical.
  • Anger, sarcasm, insults, and mockery can all be very powerful tools.
  • Power tools require skill and practice to use, because they can make a bloody mess.
  • A stereotype is not scientific evidence. There is no “extraordinary claim” requiring mountains of proof inherent in sneering at a stereotype.
  • IQ is in large part a measure of institutional competence.
  • Social sciences frequently require far more scientific competence than “hard” sciences because they tackle more complex subject matter.
  • Everyone (yes, even you) is irrational about, not just something, but far more than they’d ever stop to consider.
  • Government is a requirement for civilization on this scale.
  • Politics is a tool and not a tool of Satan.
  • The evidence says that Ron Paul is a hard-core racist who’s merely learned to shut up about it.
  • Marriage is not and never has been–not even in the 1950s–one man and one woman. Nor has it ever been forever. Marriage laws only dictate what marriage looks like from the outside for those in the middle class, and they’re not very good at that.
  • Porn can be pretty cool.
  • The answer to “No” is not “Pleeeeeze” or “La La La La La La” for anyone over the age of eight.
  • There is a cat in another room who is gearing up to die, though she may last quite some time. I’m pretty sure that’s more important than blogging right now.

 

Oh, Is It Blasphemy Day?
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The Point of Exorcism

Stephanie Zvan5 Comments

Via Jason comes a story of a young woman dying during a Buddhist exorcism.

“They allegedly strapped the victim to a chair with belts and doused her face with water,” he said.

She was confirmed dead early the next day when her mother called an ambulance after the girl fell unconscious.

“The cause of death is suffocation,” the police official said.

News reports said the two men poured water over her as an “exorcism” with the father holding the girl down while the monk chanted sutras.

Reports said the girl’s parents had turned to the monk after the youngster had suffered several years of mental and physical ill health that doctors had not been able to resolve.

It’s ugly. It’s tragic. It is also, essentially, the point of exorcism.

Continue reading “The Point of Exorcism” →

The Point of Exorcism

File Under: More Liars for Jesus

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

You know that kid in Texas, the one who had his First Amendment rights abridged in school?

“Dakota is a very well-grounded 14-year-old,” she told Fox News Radio noting that her son is an honors student, plays on the football team and is active in his church youth group. “He’s been in church his whole life and he’s been taught to stand up for what he believes.”

And that’s what got him in trouble.

Dakota was in a German class at the high school when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality in Germany. At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and “being a homosexual is wrong.”

“It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me,” Dakota told Fox. “I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”

Maybe you heard about that and had some concern about balancing human decency and freedom of speech (which is already abridged in schools). Maybe you felt some sympathy for a teacher who went too far. Me? I said, “Really?” and turned to Google.

It turns out that the answer is “No, not really,” and despite that, the teacher could be facing discipline.

Continue reading “File Under: More Liars for Jesus” →

File Under: More Liars for Jesus

Bachmann Aided by Pastor…Again

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

In 2006, Mac Hammond endorsed Michele Bachmann from the pulpit of his megachurch. In 2008, she spoke from the pulpit at his Living Word Christian Center. On Sunday, he went further yet.

Hammond, senior pastor of Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, told his 9,000-member congregation Sunday that he is joining Bachmann’s team, “working with her political campaign.”

Hammond, audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 2008 after letting Bachmann speak at his Brooklyn Park megachurch, emphasized he is acting on a “personal basis” and not in his capacity as Living Word’s pastor.

“Of course, my tightrope is this has to be done on a personal basis,” Hammond said in a video of his remarks posted on the church’s website. He noted that his church could not formally endorse her without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status.

It is a tightrope indeed. The IRS audit was halted on a technicality having to do with how the agency interacts with churches, leaving the original issue–whether the political use of Hammond’s position met the requirements for the church’s tax-exempt status–undecided. It’s also a tightrope Hammond may have already fallen off of by announcing his intentions on the church’s web site.

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Bachmann Aided by Pastor…Again

You Want to Sell Me What?

Stephanie Zvan14 Comments

Another reprint for a busy weekend.

When the doorbell rings late on a Saturday morning, it means one of two things. Unfortunately, it’s almost never one of the neighborhood kids who wants to make some money cutting my grass. No, instead it’s someone who wants me to buy their god.

Today’s was special. I was getting ready to run out and do some errands when I heard the familiar chime. Usually they send the well-dressed and stately (for the black churches) or the ultra-sincere but casual kiddies (for the white churches). Not this time. It was just some white guy my age with glasses and a stack of glossy half-page flyers.

He handed me one. I took it because I don’t really trust these people to recycle the leftovers. Then I looked at it. “Miracle for Muslims,” it said at the top, with the picture of an older black man at the bottom in a very western dress shirt.

“I’m from the X______ Church, and we’re hosting a lecture on–”

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You Want to Sell Me What?

Magic Courtesy of Dave McKean

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

I wasn’t planning to pick up a copy of Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True. No, I’m not engaged in any Elevatorgate boycott. I just prefer my reality in slightly more chewy doses, and I don’t have any younglings around at the moment who would appreciate it. I expected the book to be quite good but not for me.

Then–then! Then, I discovered that Dave McKean had done the illustrations for the book. Cue squees, bouncing, and plans to buy the book. You can get a small sense of why in the illustrations in this promotional video:

Simply put, Dave McKean is one of the most flexible artists working today (as well as being charming in person). Like most people, I discovered McKean through his collaborations with Neil Gaiman. I loved his covers for Sandman and Violent Cases, so much so that I felt a little sad when he announced that he wanted to change his style so he didn’t get bogged down in one look.

Then he did it, and he just got better. He changed his look, but he didn’t change his aesthetic. He’s still putting images together from disparate parts, some simplistic, some hyper-realistic, some surrealistic. Now he’s just working with a greater array of parts. And it works, even as part of your brain is telling you it can’t possibly.

Of course, that can’t come close to describing the art itself. For that, I recommend this video that features footage from the film MIRRORMASK. It’s got a little bit of everything.

Oh, this book is going to be good.

Magic Courtesy of Dave McKean

Cheating at Cards With Jesus

Stephanie Zvan10 Comments

I follow a bunch of local writers on Twitter. (Minneapolis is infested with us.) I don’t usually expect their feeds to start looking like those of my atheist friends, but a couple of mornings ago…

It took no time at all for that number to grow.

I suggested that she put them in touch with each other and recommend a Last Supper-themed party. I also read the poem.

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Cheating at Cards With Jesus

With God on Our Side…of the River

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

Yesterday, my husband participated in Minneapolis’s Urban Assault Ride, a checkpoint bike race with silly challenges at each stop that finally ends in a beer garden. Once he was there and rehydrating, he started posting photos, as any good photographer would. When he titled one “Huh…okay…”, it caught my attention.

Saint Paul

Dude, that kilt is too long. Yeah, I know they tell you to measure them to the bottom of the knee, but that just looks silly and cuts off one of the shapelier parts of the leg. Besides it’ll chafe in the rain when the hem…wait, that wasn’t my point.

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With God on Our Side…of the River

Won’t Anyone Think of the Children?

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

You already know that Ed Brayton‘s brother DuWayne has his own blog, I hope. You might be forgiven, however, if you were unaware that he’s back at blogging after a school-and-life-and-aaagh! hiatus. He’s been on a bit of a roll lately, with a post on Americans treating Islam as the dangerous religion and another on using appropriate sexual-identity language while engaging in sexual-identity outreach activism. It was DuWayne’s most recent post about an unpleasant encounter over religion that really got to me though.

Earlier today I managed to get into an argument with someone who overheard me talking to an acquaintance at school, who I happen to know is also an atheist. We were talking about Center For Inquiry’s “living without religion” billboard campaign, specifically about the billboard CFI MI put up in Grand Rapids that essentially asserts that you don’t need God to be a decent person. All of a sudden I felt like the internet had come alive, when this woman starts berating me about how she thinks it’s just sick how us atheists feel the need to advertise our godlessness. Her biggest concern – a concern she angrily shared rather loudly – is that she doesn’t want her children to see that, doesn’t want to be forced to explain the idea that there are people who support Satan’s plan by pretending they don’t believe in God.

Pointing out that he had to explain religious belief to his children as well only made her froth even more.

She got very angry at this – even though I didn’t even swear at her. She was enraged by my comparison, because there is no comparison. She (thankfully rather more quietly – though red faced) shrieked that she was speaking God’s truth, while “you’re speaking Satan’s lies and damned well know you are!!!” She was also enraged that I was forcing Satan’s lies on my children, trying to doom them to eternal damnation. She then breathlessly asked me how I could hate my own children so much.

Apparently letting my children attend church and make their own choices isn’t enough. That I am working to ensure my children make educated choices is damning by itself. It is absolutely unacceptable to foster any doubts in children. Through the whole tirade there were several shots taken at my character – comments that coming from anyone who wasn’t a Christian would be considered quite hateful.

It isn’t just because DuWayne sees religious privilege so clearly that keeps me reading whenever he writes. It’s that he also cuts straight to the heart of what is wrong with these arguments.

Here is what I really hate having to explain to my children, what I find awkward and uncomfortable; Hate. I cannot begin to express how difficult it was to explain bigotry to Caleb, when he was three – and again several times since. It is easy enough and I think important to explain to children that people are different – that they are many different things and that when you combine all those things in a given person, they are an individual. But trying to explain bigotry feels like you’re stripping away some of their innocence. It actually hurts a bit, every time I have reason to explain hatred and bigotry to my kids – though as of yet, I haven’t had cause to do so with Dave.

Yeah. If you’re not reading DuWayne already, you should fix that.

Won’t Anyone Think of the Children?