Yes, the dead can come back to life.
Camp Quest receives national coverage. It's too bad they had to add something about spirituality being beneficial for children. Some so-called expert thinks children's proneness to fantasy makes believing in a supernatural eavesdropping bully a good thing.
The new face of Jesus, a new meme inspired by a decrepit old woman possessed by Satan (or poor eyesight)
Seattle is one of the least religious cities in the U.S., but incredibly they have more anti-vaccine nuttery. And Mississippi, which is one of the most religious states and one of the most ignorant, doesn't allow exemptions from vaccines. Sometimes this country just makes me want to scream.
I don't get this. The National Cancer Society is using churches to enroll participants in an epidemiological study. Why??? Do they think Catholicism is a risk factor for cancer?
Puerto Ricans were victimized in a Ponzi scheme run by evangelicals. Seems like church-goers of that stripe were a wee bit gullible. Who'd a guessed that?
Chicago eliminates city jobs in order to shift care of the homeless to Catholic Charities. ... basically replacing hard-working paid employees with hard-working volunteers? Oh wunnerful. Well, at least when the laid-off workers become homeless they will have three hots and a cot. I wonder if the CC can resist prosletyzing.
Anti-gay "Fundamentalist Christian Patriot" who promoted stronger laws against exposing private parts gets caught whacking off in a public park... near children. You can't make this stuff up!
Being in a church parking lot is no protection from a bad driver. It's also apparently no place for teaching a teen to drive, especially if you don't know better than to stay in the car with the driver.
Huffpo essay on the Texas Republican Party's anti-science platform. There's a link to the platform there, but I don't have the stomach to go there.
Bill Maher holds nothing back attacking the religious right for magical thinking. "The symbol for their party shouldn't be an elephant -- it should be a unicorn."
This article on religiosity and non-religiosity in Central Florida is worth a read, and really worth point-by-point commentary which I don't have time for now. There's just so much in there - narrow-mindedness vs. inquiry for starters. I wonder how many fundy republicans will read this when they come to the convention.
If you haven't already read this, I recommend this New York Times profile of Jerry DeWitt, former fundy pastor and now executive director of Recovering from Religion.
Al Jazeera interviews feminist author Naomi Wolf about abortion. Unlike U.S. media, they have the balls to do an episode about abortion in the U.S. (the link goes to a promo)
One blogger's answer to the question: Is Israel succombing to Jewish fundamentalism?
CNN just ran a one-hour special on Mitt Romney's life. I couldn't find a link but you can imagine: blah blah daddy was a great man blah blah went to France as a "mission" blah blah wife is pretty blah blah blah The narrator really tried to make Romney sound like an interesting person but it just didn't work.
7 comments:
The dead-alive baby story actually has people in the comments pushing the "this happened, therefore Jesus" line. Gag. The kid still ended up dead. If there's a lesson here, it's "Don't trust a hasty diagnosis done in a Third World hospital."
One of my theories for Jesus is that he was misdiagnosed as dead, came to, walked around for a little while, then succumbed to his injuries. If that actually happened, it wasn't a miracle, which makes the Jesus less of a god-man, not more.
...or he just died and his sightings were about as reliable as Elvis sightings.
If--and it's a pretty big if--there really was an historical Jesus who was claimed to have risen from death, my guess is that the gospel and epistle writers already knew of preceding gods who seemed to gain stature among their believers (Osiris, anyone?) by rising from death, and decided to add this little tidbit to their mythology, in order to improve the status of their own god.
On the other hand, I also like LA's second hypothesis...
Pete Moulton
Yes, Al Jazeera does produce some good programmes. What you said about US media resonates with my own thoughts about the UK's BBC.
Just one downside though. I never heard Al Jazeera criticising Islam, whereas US and UK media do have a go at Christians sometimes (if we are lucky).
I wouldn't expect Al Jazeera to go after muslims but it's interesting that they will study the U.S. in a way that no U.S. network would study another country. That's how we got caught with our pants down on 9/11 -- the news media here was obsessed with a missing congressional intern who had been having a fling with her boss. Even now there are very few programs about other countries. Most are obsessed with whatever stupid thing some politician said this week.
Anderson Cooper has gone after abusive Christian "schools" though.
I think the reason why places in the PNW like Seattle and Portland have a lot of anti-vaccine mind-set is that many of those people are very into nature and getting back to "it" (whatever that means) and more often than not, they are not dogmatically religious.
Ahhh yes the good ole Naturalistic Fallacy. That one justifies midwifery too. My dad grew up without a mom because she was a farm wife who birthed "naturally" back in the "good" old days.
I love the misunderstanding of evolution at work with these people -- only enough of us have to survive to keep the species going. Diseases don't kill us all even in disastrous epidemics like The Black Death of 1349. They probably think they somehow have superior genes and they won't be the ones to die (or have their children die) from measles.
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