Lately, it’s been rage and battle and fury and berserkergang all over the place here, so how about something soothing for a change? I spent last weekend talking some with Jerry and Sarah of Recovering from Religion, they’re good people and it’s a good cause doing good in the world, so why don’t you catch your breath and browse some over there.
I think I’ll go make some soup.
Abdi Jeylani Malaq Marshale must have been an awesomely brave person. He lived in Somalia, he was a comedian, he made fun of Islamists, and he worked to dissuade young people from joining the insurgency.
So someone shot and killed him.
And it’s not just comedians!
So far this year, at least one Somali journalist has been targeted and killed each month.
Jamila Bey is awesome. If we had biblical marriage, I’d ask her to join my harem.*
That is all.
*Offer void if my dearly beloved only wife concusses me.
Here’s the video. Advance it to 19 minutes to skip the god-bothering and see Jamila in action.
Ronald William Brown was a puppeteer on a children’s show on the Christian Television Network. He is also devout, and liked to take children to church. What a sweet, sweet man.
Here he is, using a puppet to explain why pornography is bad for Christians.
I think you can guess exactly where this is going.
Unfortunately, he also had a, umm, fetish. I think I’ll put the creepy desires of Mr Brown below the fold, in case you’d rather not read about what he wanted to do to children.
Heina Dadabhoy has kickstarter project to write A Skeptic’s Guide to Islam. It sounds like someone is making a smart decision to write to their strengths:
There are plenty of positive books about Islam by Muslims. There are many positive books on Islam by non-Muslims. There are more negative books on Islam by non-Muslims than you’d think there were. There are several books on Islam by ex-Muslims that are personal stories, written with the intention of debunking/exposing, and/or approached from a very academic perspective. There are a handful of critical books on Islam by progressive Muslims.
I intend to bridge the last two categories with my own point of view: I was an American Muslim born-and-raised believer until I left the religion for philosophical, rather than political, reasons. The book is not intended to particularly attack Islam, per se, but neither is it going to sugar-coat or ignore important issues related to Islam.
She’s real close to her major goal of $5,000; getting a bit more than that would allow her to do some extra stuff with it.
The civilized ones are the people who are behind getting gay marriage introduced in Scotland.
The uncivilized ones are recognizable by their funny robes and their attachment to an old cult leader in Rome.
Maybe the civilized ones will shoo the uncivilized ones out of the country some time? It would be a sensible move.
William Lynn was a secretary for the clergy in the Philadelphia archdiocese; among his duties were the investigation of abuse complaints and making priest assignments — which you’d think is a good combination of duties. Unfortunately, he was a little confused and seemed to think his job was to make sure that the priests he was investigating for sexual abuse of children got assigned to fresh parishes with new, unsuspecting children. In the case of Edward Avery, for instance, he had a priest who’d been identified as a sexual abuser, who’d had psychiatric evaluations that said he was a continuing danger, and Lynn sent him off to a new place where he was caught and convicted of raping a 10-year-old altar boy.
Lynn has now been convicted covering up sexual abuse, and sentenced to a minimum of 3 years in prison. He tried to argue that the late Archbishop Bevilacqua had ordered his actions (which I wouldn’t be surprised at at all — it’s what the Catholic church does), but the court wouldn’t stand for his “I was obeying orders” defense. Now it’s time to watch the whole American branch of the Catholic church freak out.
“I think this is going to send a very strong signal to every bishop and everybody who worked for a bishop that if they don’t do the right thing, they may go to jail,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “They can’t just say ‘the bishop made me do it.’ That’s not going to be an excuse that holds up in court.”
It would be nice to imagine that the clergy will now come clean and confess their sins and try to make their little world right, but I don’t believe that for a moment: expect them to clam up tighter than ever.
I was just reminded that it’s been four years since I treated a cracker with extreme disrespect. I’d say the Catholics had all forgotten it by now, but I still get the odd email or letter from people who stumble across it and have to tell me how evil I am.
Bill Donohue will hate me forever, I’m sure.
I’ve criticized both atheists and the religious for trying to turn the recent tragedy in Colorado into an ideological battleground. You’d think at some point they’d learn that the best thing to do is shut up about how it shows Christians or atheists are evil, but no…one evangelical fruitcake, Jerry Newcombe, has taken it to the next level. He’s now arguing that not only did the shooting occur because Americans aren’t fearful enough of hell, but that the victims who were not Christian are now burning in hell.
While I appreciate his honesty and commitment to the principles of his religion, I can’t help but feel a little nauseous.
The American Patriarchy Association has all the answers! The list of causes for the recent theater shooting is long and predictable.
We aren’t sufficiently afraid of god
We aren’t afraid enough of hell
The ACLU
Godless public schools
Liberals
Movies
The Internet
Gays
Lesbians
Professors
Liberal churches
Mankind is shaking its fist at the authority of God! And God will not be silent when he’s mocked!
So he’ll scramble the brains of a random person and have him go out and murder something less than a hundred entirely random people who are only united in a common interest in Batman movies. He doesn’t seem to have a very coherent or comprehensible way of enforcing his desires.
Hey! They left one out! Maybe god just hates Batman.
