A Stanford professor of anthropology, T.M. Luhrmann, has a curious op-ed in the NY Times. She studies evangelical religions, and she takes the time to explain to us atheists and other secular people why people like to go to church. You know all those questions we ask, about whether god exists or what evidence there …
Category Archive: Religion
May 30 2013
Americans United is in the funny business?
It’s a nice video, but don’t forget…some Churches don’t allow divorce. Jane Lynch and Jordan Peele: Epic Church-State Breakup from Jordan Peele Go sign the petition, keep church and state separate!
May 30 2013
What does evil look like?
Big fangs, horns, a hideous face, wielding brutal instruments of torture? Or maybe something sleek and military that can explode in a gout of flame? Sure, those are evil all right, but real evil can be distilled down to something as simple as a lawyer signing a piece of paper, a doctor averting their eyes, …
May 29 2013
An obsession with permanence and secrecy
The next few months may prove to be very interesting — and damning — for the Catholic Church. The courts are poised to crack open a huge trove of church files, files that document the worst behavior of some of its priests, from child rape to murder. This facet of Catholic culture which insists on …
May 27 2013
Pell indicts the Australian Catholic Church
Whoa, my twitter feed is on fire with all these angry Australians. It seems Cardinal George Pell is getting grilled about child abuse within the Australian Catholic Church, and he’s being his usual callous, dogmatic self. “Some of the victims themselves aren’t entirely blameless,” indeed. The Age has an article summarizing the inquiry so far, …
May 27 2013
How do you know it’s an abuse of religion?
An interesting article by Nervana Mahmoud describes the shift of “Allahu Akbar” from exclamation of wonder to one of vengeance. I’ll take her word for it, but it made me wonder — how can you say something is an abuse of religion? Not much good comes out of horrific crimes such as the one in …
May 26 2013
A Curse in Miracles
Woe is me and alas! Pity me, for I am a secular humanist and gnu atheist embarked on trying to read the quintessential New Age non-dualistic blueprint for spiritual transformation, Dr. Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles. And it is heavy going indeed. All I’ve done so far is download the free excerpt from kindle …
May 25 2013
The diversity of Diversity
Atheists are not popular. This comes as no surprise to us or anyone, really. As far as I can tell we are dead last in every U.S. poll in which we are included and explicit terrorists, Nazis, and the Westboro Baptist Church are not. I suppose the cultural assumption that ‘you need God to be …
May 24 2013
Pope Reaches Out to the Damned
Hello, all. Sastra here doing a guest post for PZ, who is toiling hard, very hard, in Romania. Or sleeping. Either; both. Please bear with me then as I try to figure out how to work this thing. Trial and error… My title echoes an old one from the Onion. The Cracker People are at …
May 24 2013
I was not even tempted
Aron Ra brings up a minor incident from the past, in reference to the iERA’s recent denunciation of the Woolwich murder. However I must remind anyone reading this that the iERA is headed by one Hamza Tzortzis who PZ and I met when he crashed the World Atheist Convention in Dublin Ireland. Hamza tried to …
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