It’s easy!

A commenter named marius at the Calamities of Nature site where I saw this had a go at using the template and came up with the following:

The mind is like a quark. In both cases, when tunneling occurs, the physical reality of the void becomes apparent. It is only due to the field that surrounds us all that we can participate in consciousness. From this we know that the grand theory of unity exists. Amazingly, nature is the perfect analog to this phenomenon. The deep connection is the result of the earth. It is revealing that there is a fundamental link between us and the higher plane of existence and that consciousness is always found in the dark energy surrounding the stars.

Pretty good, no? Actually, a lot of so-called sophisticated theology that tries to meld science with god is like this so I suspect that many modern theologians are working off the same template.

Via Pharyngula, I learn that Campus Crusade for Christ, the evangelical organization, has decided to change its name. The new one? Cru. Yes, really. Apparently college affiliates had been referring to themselves this way for a while.

I don’t know about this. Cru sounds more like the stage name a rapper would adopt, as in ‘DJ Cru’. Furthermore, the university where I work at has the acronym CWRU that is spoken as ‘crew’ which sounds the same as ‘cru’. So the members of the campus affiliate of this organization will become known as the ‘CWRU Cru crew’, which when vocalized will sound like you are doing bird imitations.

The reason for the change is that apparently the words ‘Campus’ and ‘Crusade’ had negative connotations. More interestingly, they found that even ‘Christ’ was off-putting because people “might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name”. They seem to think that having a name that gave no hint of being Christian would enable their members to sneak their religious message into conversations with people who were unaware that they were targets of a proselytization effort.

This is of course the kind of sneaky tactics religious people use. But despite that, I took it to be a very encouraging sign that the brand ‘Christ’ is seen by even evangelical Christians as being tarnished.

Jerry Coyne has a very interesting post discussing a new study by F. Solt, P. Habel, and J. T. Grant, J. T. titled Economic inequality, relative power, and religiosity that appeared in the journal Social Science Quarterly, 92: 447–465 (2011), that finds that economic inequality is positively correlated with religious belief, and looks at theories that might account for this.

The most common theory is called “deprivation theory” which says that in economically unequal societies, poorer folks turn to religion for reassurance and comfort. The authors of the paper introduce something called “relative power theory” that says that “many wealthy individuals, rather than simply allowing redistribution to be decided through the democratic process as such median-voter models assume, respond to higher levels of inequality by adopting religious beliefs and spreading them among their poorer fellow citizens. Religion then works to discourage interest in mere material well-being in favor of eternal spiritual rewards, preserving the privileges of the rich and allowing unequal conditions to continue.”

Coyne summarizes the conclusions of the paper.

Their findings thus suggest that both the deprivation and relative power theories are needed to explain the data. In economically unequal societies, rich people promulgate religion to keep their own place in the hierarchy, and, rather than fighting for more equality, poor people accept religion as an easy form of solace.
…
The authors also note that the relative power theory explains why the U.S. is so religious despite the fact that its citizens are generally well off. It is, they say, because the U.S. shows considerably more economic inequality than other developed countries (and that is true).

The authors also did a time-study and found that “Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next,” while “past values of religiosity do not predict future values of inequality” clearly indicating that it is inequality that influences religiosity and not the other way around.

A heartening sign is the trend of declining religiosity in America over the last half century.

Of course, this predicts that the recent rise in inequality in the US will see an uptick in religiosity. But it seems that the overall tendency is for religion to decline.

Both the original paper and Coyne’s summary make for fascinating reading.

What appealed to me is the inference that the fights for economic justice and the elimination of religion are related, since those are two of my personal goals.

Amazon allows readers to post reviews of their books. Jerry Coyne has made a nice compilation of some of the reviews of the Bible by people who treat is as a work of fiction. It’s pretty funny. Here’s a sample:

There is little plot to this book, save for in the second half, much of which revolves around God’s son, Jesus, an interesting fellow. Definitely, the story has finally hit a stride, so the New Testament reads like a novella. Everywhere this Jesus guy goes, he travels with his posse of “Apostles,” who aren’t your standard yes men. Although they all sing his praises when the going’s good, one gives a great “I don’t know about no Jesus” performance (Peter) worthy of a scruffy rat like Steve Buscemi. Another (Judas) sells out Jesus for a bunch of dead presidents, like Sean Penn did in “Carlito’s Way.” Unfortunately, Jesus gets rubbed out by an Italian gang, “The Romans,” who torture him and nail him to a cross in revenge for representing on their turf. Lots of high drama here. “Revelations” was pretty weird, sort of like watching “Fantasia” while doing mushrooms, only a lot scarier. Altogether, an excellent read.

The Dutch government has taken the first steps towards banning the slaughter of animals without stunning them first. This means that the way Jews and Muslims produce kosher and halal meat is no longer allowed since that requires the slitting of the animal’s throat while it is still alive.
[Read more…]

Reader Chris sent me this link to 50 questions about the Bible. He got 26 right and he thought I would do better. Alas, I got only 25 right.

Where I think I went wrong was with my method of guessing for those questions that I did not know the answers to. I followed the recommended strategy for answering any multiple-choice tests and avoided the outlier options. But it often turned out that what I thought was too crazy to be true (even for the Bible) was in fact the right answer. So I was punished for giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt

The latest issue (July/August 2011) of the British magazine New Humanist has an article by me that tries to clear up the confusion about the distinction between atheist and agnostic. I received my print copy today and my article may be available online next week.

New Humanist is published by The Rationalist Association and is a highly entertaining mix of short and long form articles, cartoons, columns, and interviews, written in a cheeky, lively, and exuberant style, with plenty of eye-catching graphics.

A bus company in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for prohibitively expensive insurance against vandalism from an atheist group that wanted to place an ad on its buses. Apparently they feared that the ad’s message “Are you good without God? Millions are” would inflame Christians enough that they would attack the buses.

A spokesperson for the atheist group draws the obvious conclusion, “The insurance money needed from us basically says CATA [the bus company] and On The Move [the bus company’s ad agency] trust the atheists in this community more so than the religious, otherwise the churches that advertise would have that extra insurance premium added to their total cost.”

Blog reader FuDaYi sent me this news item about a Jewish rabbinical court that sentenced to death by stoning a dog that wandered into premises because they thought it was the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who had antagonized the court 20 years earlier and had been cursed by the judges to have his spirit passed to a dog when he died, which happened a few years ago. Fortunately the dog escaped.

What is it about religion that destroys people’s minds?

The well-known and long-standing Cleveland TV weatherman is an avuncular person, widely known for being an animal lover. In this radio interview on WCPN 90.3, he turns out to be quite outspoken about his anti-war views and his disbelief in god.

This 12-minutes portion of the interview begins at the 36:00 minute mark. (Thanks to Jeff.)