Fallows on anti-Mormon “bigotry”

James Fallows is irritating in a different way from Andrew Sullivan. He’s reliably…middle. Safe; predictable; good at thinking what Everyone thinks.

Sometimes what Everyone thinks is just wrong. Fallows as Everyone thinks anti-Mormonism is simply another bigotry, like racism.

Groan.

I do understand the political handicapping aspect of stories about the “Mormon angle.” It’s like asking three years ago whether America was “ready” for a black president. Or whether we’re “ready” for a Hispanic, female, Jewish, Asian, Muslim, atheist, gay, unmarried, overweight, etc President. [Read more…]

Jackpot

Three long-term holds at the library all just turned up at once (long-term as in there are a lot of people on the list ahead of you).

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.

Rubs hands with glee.

(I know, very horse-and-buggy. But I still like books.)

Higher bullshitting

Andrew Sullivan thinks “militant atheists” have an excessively crude epistemology. (Via WEIT)

First he tells us how his works.

As to Coyne’s challenge to present a criterion of what is real in the Bible and what is true, I’d argue that empirical claims –   like, say, a census around the time of Christ’s birth, or the rule of Pontius Pilate in Palestine at the time – can be tested empirically. But the Gospels themselves have factually contradictory Nativity and Crucifixion stories…and so scream that these are ways to express something inexpressible – God’s entrance into human history as a human being. [Read more…]

That kind of ruckus

Separation of church and state? That’s terrorism!

The mayor of Whiteville, Tennessee said his community is  under attack from a national atheist organization that is threatening to sue  unless they remove a cross atop the town’s water tower.

“They are terrorists as far as I’m concerned,” said  Mayor James Bellar about the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “They are alleging that some Whiteville resident feels very, very intimidated by this  cross.” [Read more…]

Finders keepers

Dear old tradition.

Bride kidnapping, or “bridenapping”, happens in at least 17 countries around the world, from China to Mexico to Russia to southern Africa. In each of these lands, there are communities where it is routine for young women and girls to be plucked from their families, raped and forced into marriage. Few continents are not blighted by the practice, yet there is little awareness of these crimes, and few police investigations. [Read more…]

Ferocious extrapolation

The new bandwagon (or meme): moan a deep moan about the persecution of Christians in places like the UK and the US. A guy called (inelegantly) Tom J Wilson does a particularly maudlin version for the Huffington Pest.

The fact that British police would consider the displaying of Christian scripture an illegal offence is a concerning indication of the mentality that British society has come to adopt towards all things Christian.

For anyone who follows the British media’s reporting of American politics, the continuous attempt to run down certain American politicians on account of their faith rather than engaging with their politics has now become a rather boring familiarity. [Read more…]

More godless groups in the world

Leo Igwe sent me the link to a heartening article about the global energization of atheism.

At the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August, delegates from India,
Uganda, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil — all countries where belief in a supreme deity or deities has a strong hold — reported mounting interest in their philosophy.

Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, they argue that morality
is based in human nature and does not need a father-figure god to back it up
with punishment in an afterlife, in which they do not believe. [Read more…]

Apostles have been raised up by God

Via Ed Brayton, Terry Gross talks to the apostle C Peter Wagner. Be afraid.

On demons

“As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional
society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance
Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. … This is a society of
a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She’s written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons. And I don’t do that much. Once in a while when I get in a corner, I might. But that’s — that’s been her ministry.
And so I’ve been very, very close to that for years. We’ve been married for 60
years.” [Read more…]

United for separation of church and state

Another reply to Wallis and Pinsky. (I like it when the objects of theist bullying fight back. Sue me.) This one is by Rob Boston of Americans United.

There are people in this country who belong to fundamentalist Christian religious groups and who believe that they have the right (and perhaps the duty) to run your life.

That is a fact. These people exist. I’ll be spending some time with them this weekend at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Summit.” [Read more…]