Meanwhile, over at Patheos

I stopped by the Patheos web site to see how some of my former FtB co-bloggers were doing (they seem to be doing well, I’m pleased to say), and I spotted this post, under the heading, “Answer This, Atheists!” The blogger’s name is Marc, his blog is called “Bad Catholic” (great name), and the full title of his actual post is “An Attempt to Explain Christianity to Atheists In a Manner That Might Not Freak Them Out” (not so great name). He introduces his subject with the following preface.

Between being told that Christianity is a system of oppression, a complex way to justify burning with hatred over the existence of gay people, and a general failure of the human intellect, I begin to suspect that few people know why Christians exist at all. This is my attempt to explain why I am a Christian.

Any philosophy that claims that there exists nothing supernatural cannot grant purpose to suffering.

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Is Christianity killing the GOP?

One reason why the separation of church and state is a good idea is that uniting religion and politics tends to do more harm to both than either could self-inflict on its own. Indeed, many of the early settlers in America were people who came here to escape from the Christian nations of Europe, which is why the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights contains a prohibition against government establishment of religion. But the same phenomenon applies on a smaller scale as well, and the current woes of the Republican party may be a case in point.

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Feminism in outer space

I have a long-ish commute, and I drive an “affordable” car. Apparently, though,  it has a really good radio, because I think I was picking up a talk show from another planet. The guest and hosts were discussing feminism in the context of the guest’s new book about “God’s 10 Gifts for Women,” and the description of feminism was like nothing I’ve seen on this Earth. Did I mention it was a Christian radio station?

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Family values?

Years ago I used to be very interested in Mormonism, though that was when I was an evangelical Christian and my main interest was in converting them. But I learned quite a lot about them and even attended a Mormon church for a while (incognito, as it were).

One thing I learned was that, according to Mormon theology, every human soul born on earth was originally procreated in heaven by God the Father having sex with one of His many wives, who then gave birth to a “spirit child,” which in turn had to be born into a physical body in order to progress into eventual godhood. Considering that the current birth rate is something like 200,000 per day, that’s a whole heaping helping of heavenly humping!

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Bishops call religious liberty a threat to religious liberty

Washington state’s four Catholic bishops have released a statement warning that if non-Christians are allowed to engage in non-Christian forms of marriage, religious liberty will suffer.

The bishops’ statement, issued Tuesday by the Washington State Catholic Conference, came as Washington-based Expedia became the latest major employer to come out in support of same-sex marriage.

In the most controversial passage of their pastoral statement, the Catholic bishops argue that passage of Referendum 74 would make THEM the objects of discrimination.

Really? And what kind of discrimination would that be?

“The legal separation of marriage from procreation would have a chilling effect on religious liberty and the right of conscience,” the bishops claim.  “Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract, it will become legally discriminatory for public and private institutions such as schools to promote the unique value of children being raised by their biological mothers and fathers.

“No institution or individual could propose that married mothers and fathers provide a singular benefit to children without being accused of discrimination.  Recent attacks on churches, businesses and nonprofit organizations that express their conscientious objection to the redefinition of marriage underscore the danger.”

In other words, the “discrimination” consists of not being allowed to discriminate against gays under the disingenuous facade of merely “promoting” whatever you imagine as the “unique value” and “singular benefit” of having opposite-sex parents.  Though when you come right down to it, the main benefit of having opposite sex parents is that doing so avoids the persecution and discrimination you’d otherwise be getting from people like the four Catholic bishops.

You can tell they know they’re on the wrong side by the way they can’t bring themselves to admit what it is that they’re really after. The power to persecute others is the exact opposite of religious liberty. So they call themselves defenders of religious liberty, in order to cling to their power to persecute. They ought to just bow down and confess their sin, and repent.

While they’re at it, they should go the whole way and admit that their God is a lie too. It’s not like that’s not obvious too.

The cockroach babies

It’s been a long time since I’ve visited the crew over at William Dembski’s abandoned blog Uncommon Descent, but this post by scordova caught my eye. He’s wrestling with the problem of malicious “designs” in nature, and gets right to the heart of the matter.

Can the Intelligent Designer of life create malicious designs? If the flagellum and other parts of bacteria are intelligently designed, it would raise the question whether microbially-based diseases and plagues are intelligently designed. It seems the best inference from the evidence is that even malicious designs are also intelligently designed.

Always the ID dilemma. Once you start confusing function with purpose, there’s no reasonable way to stop inferring design for everything, even the nasty stuff. And since ID, apart from superficial lip service to polytheism and panspermatism, is just window dressing for good old-fashioned fundamentalist creationism, the presumed design of the more “malicious” aspects of nature poses a theological problem of no small proportions.

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Circumcision makes sexual promiscuity healthier

The American Association of Pediatrics has released a report that favors male circumcision on the grounds that it reduces the spread of sexually-transmitted disease among promiscuous heterosexuals.

Perhaps the most powerful evidence in favour of circumcision comes from randomized controlled trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. These found that, for men who have sex with women, circumcision reduced the risk of infection with HIV. (No protection was observed for men who have sex with men.) The South African and Ugandan trials also found that circumcision reduced infection rates for human papillomavirus (HPV) and herpes.

So if you have a sexually-active infant, you should talk to your pediatrician about getting him circumcised.