Humanism is now officially a religion!

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Shelaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Justin (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Daniel Boone (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Too extreme even for FOX.”, “Take Action: Take action for human rights!”, “Demand transparency in Wall Street reform negotiations.”, “Working Families » Take Action!”, “PETITION TO CONGRESS: Save Net Neutrality! | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”, “Repower America | Tell BP: Spill the Truth!”, and “Tell EPA: Take away BP's billions in federal contracts”.

Pardon me if this seems abbreviated, but Blogger malfunctioned, and I had to redo a lot of this.

Topic 1:  “Humanists join Hertfordshire Police chaplaincy team”.  Humanism is now effectively a religion, at least in the United Kingdom.  Non-religions do not have chaplains.

Topic 2:  More religious persecution:  “Egyptian Convert Endures Life at a Standstill – on the Run”, “Muslim Youths in Nigeria Destroy Church Buildings, Pastor’s Home”, “Second Wave of Deportations Hits Foreign Christians in Morocco”, and “Nigeria: 6 dead in religion-fueled violence in Jos”.  So much for Islam being the “religion of peace”.

Topic 3:  “How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam” discusses how Europe and the USA got into the habit of trying to ally themselves to Islamists.  Needless to say, this approach has never worked.

Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor: “DEMON KITTEN FOUNDZ GAITWAY 2 NETHERWURLDZ”:

I had no idea the netherworld could be reached through a hole in a dashboard…

Peace.

Aaron

The writers of Caprica have the subtlety of hitting someone in the head with a sledgehammer

Greetings.

Jewish date:  23 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s holiday:  Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Time to shame Sen. Shelby”.

Topic 1:  Episode 2 of Caprica: “Rebirth”.  The series finally moves beyond the pilot.  This episode deals largely with (1) Zoe Graystone II trying to hide from everyone except Lacy Rand that she is not an ordinary, insentient Cylon, and (2) many of the other major characters, unsurprisingly, still having severely disturbed behavior and emotions.  Most of what else happens is not especially religious in nature.  However, we do get a peak into the lives of the Soldiers of the One.  Lacy visits Sister Clarice Willow at home to discover that the latter is in a polygamous marriage—and I mean polygamous, not polygynous; there are multiple wives and husbands.  There is also the strong implication that Sister Clarice has had sex with students for (allegedly) therapeutic purposes.  I will take this as a sign that the writers are trying to make the Soldiers of the One unsympathetic.

Topic 2:  More religious intolerance (and, no, this recurring topic is not going away anytime soon):  “Constitutional Court Taking Up Indonesia's Thorny Religious Row”, “Pakistan double bombing kills Shia Muslims”, “Anti-Semitic attacks against Jews 'rise in the UK'”, “Attacks on Christians in India’s Karnataka Frequent, Furious”, and “Arrested Evangelists in Tanzania Say Muslims Colluded with Police”.  Meanwhile, Ṣippi Livni, Israel’s opposition leader, is planning to visit the UK in a direct challenge to laws there allowing for the arrest under universal jurisdiction of anyone who has allegedly committed war crimes.  There has been a threat of abuse of such laws by anti-Semites against Israelis.  I have to admire her attitude.  There is some effort at changing the law in the UK, but we yet have to see if anything substantial comes of it.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Well, this is going back”:


Peace.

Aaron

Ancient Hebrew and conservative Christian revisionism

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Wa’era’).

Today’s holiday:  Feast of Hilary (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Sign the Petition | UANI:  Support Human Rights in Iran”, “Portect Children From Toxic Pesticide Clouds - The Petition Site”, “Take Action: Don't let polluters strip the Clean Air Act”, and “Repower America | Save our clean air”.

Topic 1:  “Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered”.  Thus is it written:

Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who deciphered the inscription: "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research."

And this article goes on to further discuss other violations of common scholarly assumptions which will be pretty much expected by anyone with orthodox Jewish beliefs who knows what he/she is talking about.  I know I still need to do a lot of research on the Documentary Hypothesis and Higher Criticism for the Divine Misconceptions project, but something like this does not assure me that Biblical criticism has much predictive (or in this case, postdictive) power.

Topic 2:  “Revisionaries:  How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks.”  This article deals with the wrong way to get one’s ideas accepted.  The right way is to give people sound, rational reasons to believe that one is right.  The problem is that creationism, pushed by conservative Christians, is implausible.  It has been soundly defeated and is considered false even among scientists who are serious Christians.  Creationists have taken to legal maneuvers to coerce people into accepting their ideas, but this has only met with at best mixed success.  This article deals with efforts by conservative Christian creationists to foist their ideas on the United States at large by using dirty political maneuvering to get their ideas, on creationism as well as history and politics—and regardless of whether or not there is any reason to believe they are correct—into textbooks used in Texas and by extension the rest of the country.  Shame on them!

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Yup”.


Peace.

Aaron

In praise of Westboro Baptist Church (sort of)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Kislew 5770 (Parashath Wayyeshev).

Today’s holidays:  Saint Nicholas Day (Christianity), Second Sunday of Advent (Roman Catholicism), Saint Day for Nicholas the Wonderworker (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Divided We Fail:  Real people, real stories”, “Senate: Don't Compromise on Public Option! - The Petition Site”, and “DemocracyForAmerica.com » Enough is Enough”.

Image of arch-hate-monger Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  “Westboro Baptist will protest Hillel Monday”.  Let me be frank:  everyone your humble blogger has ever heard give an opinion of the Westboro Baptist Church thinks they are a bunch of hate-filled bigots with a poor grip on reality.  They are most infamous for insensitively (to put it very mildly) protesting at military funerals, claiming that homosexuality is the cause of war deaths.  They are rabidly anti-homosexual, anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, anti-Eastern Orthodox, anti-Hindu, anti-Islamic, anti-Jewish, anti-American—pretty much anti-anything other than themselves.  The reasoning given for the protest (and probably every protest they ever had) makes no sense.  They just give insults, paranoia, and verses from the Christian Bible out of context.  Relevant to this particular protest, they do not seem to know anything about the historical Hillel or the modern organization named after him.  And yet, in all this, there is something to be said in their favor:  they are nonviolent.  They do not injury people.  They do not kill people.  They do not commit acts of terrorism.  All they do is go around the US and protest, claiming that God hates everyone who does not agree with them.  Contrast what happens in certain other parts of the Earth when one group opposes another:  oppression, violence, and death.  (Just out of my folder for stuff to be possibly posted on this blog:  “Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims”, “AZERBAIJAN: Officials deny Alternative Service commitment, as victim challenges sentence”, “TAJIKISTAN: Court bans Baptist church”, “KAZAKHSTAN: 'I could now be deported at any time'”, “Indonesian Theology Students Withstand Threats, Illness”, “Vietnam Buddhists complain of ongoing harassment”, “Swiss party leader calls for ban of separate Jewish and Muslim cemeteries”.)  Are the Westboro Baptist Church good people?  According to a lot of (if not most) moral systems, no.  They may be hate-mongering lunatics, but all they really accomplish is to annoy people.  As far as accomplishing evil goes, they are nothing more than comic relief.

Topic 2:  “Catholic League slams PETA ad featuring Joanna Krupa holding crucifix over nude body”:  The Catholic League is complaining about advertisements from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ripping off Christian imagery and containing nudity.  It must be noted that no one is adverse to adopting pets.  The problem is that PETA’s public relations committee, while having mastered  the art of getting attention, seems to have no clue that needlessly offending people is a horrible way of spreading their message.  Not to mention that PETA has no clue what angels look like.  Usually they get described as “men”, but Ezekiel 1 has a truly psychedelic description which is anything but humanoid.

Topic 3:  To end on a lighter note, I would like to note that the Jewish holiday of Ḥanukkah starts this Friday night, and present the humorous list “Top Ten Signs your Family is unsubtly hinting to you to lose weight during your family Chanukah party”.

Peace.

Aaron

Bibi, creationism, and Basement Cat

Greetings.

Jewish date:  12 Kislew 5770 (Parashath Wayyishlaḥ).

Today’s holiday:  First Sunday of Advent (Roman Catholicism).

NOTE:  My apologies to anyone getting an earlier version of this post.  Sometimes Blogger does really stupid things.

Topic 1:  “Bibi's bad week”.  This article deals with what the Obama administration wants Israel to do for the sake of the “peace process”, such as freeze Israeli building in Judea and Samaria and release terrorists, how Binyamin Nethanyahu is starting to give in to such ill-conceived demands, and why all this is a bad idea.  That Israel should give concessions is based on the assumption that concessions from Israel brings the Israeli-Arab War closer to an end.  It does not.  Ever since at least Jimmy Carter, American presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have pressured Israel to make more and more concessions to the Arabs in the hopes of peace, most of the Israeli prime ministers have made concessions, and still the war is no closer to ending.  They say that madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results; if so, the strategy of Israeli concessions is madness.  My suggestion:  United States presidents should get out of the “peace process”.  If over 30 years of sticking their noses into Israel’s business has produced only misery, hatred, destruction, and death, then they should be rethinking their actions and not relying on assumptions which are wrong.  It makes no sense to ignore basic facts about this war, such as it is an Islamic jihad against Judaism and that land is an excuse for the war, not a reason.  And Israel should refuse to be dealt with as a second-class country.  Instead of putting its own sovereignty on the negotiating table, it should be making demands and refusing to budge on anything until they are met.  From the United States, they should demand and receive the release of Jonathan Pollard and moving the American embassy to Jerusalem.  Israel should also seize complete control of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and impose peace rather than waste time on negotiating with the Arabs.

Topic 2:  “Evangelicals, creation, and scripture:  an overview” by Mark Noll.  This paper deals with how American evangelical Christianity developed its current mode of Biblical literalism and creationism.  Literalism apparently worked well for Protestant Christianity in a democratic environment, especially anti-traditional variants; one does not need to be a great scholar to understand a literal interpretation.  There is a lot more in there, but I do not have the time at the moment to summarize it all.

Topic 3:  More religious humor:  “basement cat”:

Here we have not only the “black cat = evil” trope, but also the notion that Hell is hot.  I am not sure where that notion comes from either, so if anyone knows, please tell me.  Thanks in advance.

Peace

Aaron

Inaugural post

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 ’Elul 5769.

Today’s holiday:  Our Lady of Sorrows.

Worthy cause of the day:  “ColorOfChange.org:  Help us hold the line:  All major advertisers have left Beck:  Help us keep them from returning” and “Divided We Fail:  Real people, real stories”.  (I am a religious man, and it is commonly considered the duty of religious people to worry about people.)

Welcome to the inaugural post of Divine Misconceptions, the blog which looks at religious fallacies and misinformation and an aid to me writing a book on the subject.  Formerly such material had a home at my other blog, Weird thing of the day, but intuition insisted that that blog was spreading itself over too wide a range of topics.  Now on with today’s dose of religious fallacies and misconceptions from across the Internet.

Topic 1:  “Kids send Marcus the lamb to slaughter”:  Thus is it written:

A group of schoolchildren who reared a lamb from birth and named it Marcus has overridden objections by parents and rights activists and voted to send the animal to slaughter.

This is not strictly a religious issue, but it is a moral/ethical one, and morality and ethics frequently overlap with religion.  The children in question were studying farming, and as part of the project they raised a lamb (among other animals), and they decided to cull the lamb and use the proceeds to buy pigs.  And somehow this made a lot of people very mad, and yet there is a strange inconsistency to this anger.  Most of us eat meat and make use of leather, even though neither is strictly necessary for life; thus most of us in one way or another contribute to the killing of animals, including cute, furry animals like Murray the Lamb.  Most of this slaughter happens without anyone except vegans or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals noticing or even caring.  Most of us, therefore, did what these children did, and yet we complain when these children copy us.  The only difference is that the children did it deliberately, and the rest of us ordered hamburgers and let a company decide that a cow would die.  For the sake of consistency, all the protesters should consider setting a good example by becoming vegans.

Topic 2:  “Saving Anthony” and “Reading Nature and Reading Scripture”:  These are evangelical Christian articles warning against inflexible theology.  Obviously not everything in a revealed religion is up for grabs; there is material handed down all the way back to the beginning.  But the amount of information that is handed down is always finite, so rather than there being just a single, crystal-clear theology possible, there is always a sizable range of possibilities.  It therefore makes no sense to jump to the conclusion that one’s religion is wrong if one discovers that one’s favored theology is wrong, since there may be other possible theologies which are still viable.  Only when the data is inconsistent with all of a religion’s possible theologies can it be legitimately be considered disproved.  So if one discovers potential problems with one’s theologies, the first thing to do is DON’T PANIC!

Aaron