Last weekend, Saturday Night Live released the ‘trailer’ for Djesus Uncrossed made in the Quentin Tarantino style with lots of gruesome violence, with Jesus as the star of a revenge fantasy. As you can imagine, some Christians are not happy, especially that perpetual outrage machine Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. [Read more…]
I remember the first time that I realized that I had a false memory. It concerned an event that I remembered from when I was about six years old. There was a fire a few houses away and my father decided to pack us in the car and drive us away for safety in case it should spread and engulf our home. When I asked my mother and older sister many years later about this incident, they both said that such a sequence never happened. But the images are still quite strong in my mind. [Read more…]
Looming over the selection process for the next pope is the fallout from the sex scandals that have rocked the church, especially in the US and Europe. While there have been reported cases of abuse in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, they have been fewer and it is not clear why. It may be that victims in many developing countries have less power and the church has more, and thus they have been less reluctant to come forward with complaints. [Read more…]
Negotiating the boundary between church and state to determine what is allowed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Clause of the US constitution can be tricky at times and the US Supreme Court has grappled with it on numerous occasions. But one thing is quite clear and that is that official school sponsored prayer in public schools is not allowed. [Read more…]
The New York Times reports on yet another deal in which the government lets a big bank get off lightly with crimes and does not disclose the deal to the public. The deal between the New York Fed and Bank of America occurred in July but only came to light because of court filings last week. Not only did the government give the bank a mere slap on the wrist, it then maneuvered to release the bank from other massive legal claims against it totaling billions of dollars. [Read more…]
The Vatican is concerned that after the pope resigns and is no longer the head of state and loses his immunity, he might be in danger of being brought to trial for the many crimes of the Catholic Church. Hence they are recommending that he stay within the confines of the Vatican and not travel to other countries where he might be subjected to arrest, the way that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was when he traveled to England. [Read more…]
My recent post on the pastor who scrawled on her meal receipt an ungracious note to the server in an Applebee’s restaurant resulted in an interesting discussion in the comments on whether the server was justified in putting a photo of the receipt on the web with the name of the customer visible but other information (the name of the restaurant, the date, and the credit card number) omitted. [Read more…]
I once had my pocket picked. It was on a bus in Sri Lanka and I never even noticed that I had lost something. But the thief made a mistake in that he mistook a case containing keys for a wallet. When he discovered his error, he threw the case away and left the bus. When I later discovered my loss I asked the conductor if he had seen my keys and he said that he had found them and gave them back to me. So I had a lucky escape. [Read more…]
Anti-abortion activists who want to outlaw the procedure entirely have usually shied away from answering the question as to what punishment should be meted out to the women and doctors who get abortions anyway, since they know that there is not much support for putting such people in jail. Most people realize that people get abortions because they are desperate and should not be treated as criminals. [Read more…]