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A Jealous God
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Tag Archives: Religion
Bring a Dish to Pass
Damn, Christianity is weird:
The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ is a Christian celebration of the circumcision of Jesus in accordance with Jewish tradition, eight days (according to the Semitic and southern European calculation of intervals of days) after his birth, the occasion on which the child was formally given his name.
The circumcision of Jesus has traditionally been seen, as explained in the popular 14th century work the Golden Legend, as the first time the blood of Christ was shed, and thus the beginning of the process of the redemption of man, and a demonstration that Christ was fully human, and of his obedience to Biblical law.
The feast day appears on 1 January in the liturgical calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It also appears in the pre-1960 General Roman Calendar, and is celebrated by some churches of the Anglican Communion and virtually all Lutheran churches.
Science Flies You To The Moon…
Found this on some Tumblr site awhile ago,
Saudia Arabia’s Witch Hunts
Human Rights Watch has a disturbing report about witch hunts in Saudi Arabia where witchcraft is still a crime punishable by death. And since Saudi Arabia also lacks a penal code, what constitutes witchcraft and what evidence can be used to demonstrate that someone has practiced witchcraft is entirely up to individual judges.
In one of the cases Human Rights Watch mentions, Lebanese television psychic Ali Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia while making a pilgrimage to Mecca for the Hajj.
Religious police arrested Ali Sabat in his hotel room in Medina on May 7, 2008, where he was on pilgrimage before returning to his native Lebanon. Before his arrest, Sabat frequently gave advice on general life questions and predictions about the future on the Lebanese satellite television station Sheherazade, according to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar and the French newspaper Le Monde. These appearances are said to be the only evidence against Sabat.
Sabat was sentenced to death in November 2009, and is not the only person awaiting execution for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia. In 2006, a Saudi judge sentenced Fawza Falih to death for practicing witchcraft and she is still being held awaiting the carrying out of the death sentence.
Obviously bringing international attention to these cases may force the Saudi Arabian government to think twice about actually going forward with the executions, but it has no compunction against carrying out such sentences. According to Human Rights Watch, in 2007 it executed Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim for the crime of sorcery.
Holy Bible: Stock Car Racing Edition
One of these days, Zondervan is going to release a Holy Bible: Porn Star Edition. Until then, this cheesey Stock Car Racing version will have to suffice.
Imagine No Religion Billboard
The Freedom from Religion Foundation has created quite a controversy with its atheist billboard campaigns, like this one,
Of course half the fun with these sorts of campaigns is getting people outraged at what is, frankly, a fairly tame message. The billboards are certainly no more confrontational or in-your-face than religious-themed billboards (though, in general, I find billboards to be an eyesore).
Does Chris Mooney Even Know What Is In ‘Unscientific America’?
For the past few days, PZ Myers and Chris Mooney have been going at it on their respective blogs over Mooney’s new book Unscientific America. I haven’t read Mooney’s book, but apparently it includes a chapter that is uncharitable toward Myers and other so-called “New Atheists.” Myers argues that Mooney’s book is “useless”, while Mooney has decried Myers’ alleged distortions of his claims in Unscientific America.
So far the debate has been marked by Myers raising substantive objections to Unscientific America followed by Mooney either changing the subject or urging interested parties to go read the book. However, there was a telling exchange between Myers and Mooney over at Daily Kos which cast Mooney in an extremely unfavorable light.
In the comments section of a review of UA, a commenter accuses Mooney of distorting the views of Richard Dawkins. The commenter quotes Myers’ critique of UA,
Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”
This would be a misrepresentation of Dawkins’ views. Dawkins has written that he thinks the existence of God is a scientific question, and while Dawkins thinks the existence of God is highly improbable, absolute certainty on the question is impossible. Not to worry, though, Mooney replies that this is just another one of those distortions of UA from Myers,
we use that phrase
although it is not attributed to dawkins.
i’ve read dawkins book in some detail, and our objection is to his making god’s existence a scientific question. i realize he does not ascribe full certainty to his atheistic conclusion–but he claims he can reason scientifically about god’s existence. we’re saying that a lot of theologians, philosophers, etc, would say that’s a category error.
i really have to ask that you read our book, rather than its misrepresentation in skewed reviews.
by Chris Mooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 07:05:48 AM PDT
Well that sucks — you’d hope Myers and the New Atheists wouldn’t go around distorting Mooney’s views. Except, well, they’re not as Myers notes in reply to Mooney,
Yes, you did (13+ / 0-)
Tsk, tsk, Chris. Here’s the quote in context.
But much like the anti-evolutionists do, the New Atheists often seek to collapse the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. In The God Delusion, for instance, Richard Dawkins makes the dubious claim that the existence of God is, as he puts it, “unequivocally a scientific question.” Quite a lot of philosophers — and scientists — would disagree. It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.
You unequivocally assign that view to Dawkins. He’s the only person you mention, twice, in that paragraph, and you are using him as your sole example of the attitude you are trying to illustrate.
Your comment is remarkable in that not only do you claim it is others that are misrepresenting your views, but right here you are misrepresenting what you actually said. My paragraph is a very accurate summation of what you wrote.
Mooney then concedes the point,
PZ,
I’ve looked at the passage again (should have been a lot more careful before), and you are right–and I made an error. It does clearly ascribe this view to Dawkins.Now that I’ve read your criticism on your blog, I think “entirely preclude” states too strongly Dawkins’ position, and we should have been more nuanced here. However he does still try to claim that God’s existence is a scientific question.
Thanks for catching this.
by ChrisMooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 01:35:59 PM PDT
Wow. What a dunderhead.
And leaving aside Mooney’s confusion about his own damn book, for a book about scientific illiteracy to suggest that part of the solution is to simply wall off this or that particular problem as beyond scientific investigation is insane.
Yet Another Survey Reporting Decline in Religious Belief in the United States
The Ada Evening News has a nice story on a Trinity College survey of religious attitudes in the United States that has found the same rise of secularism as similar studies,
Trinity College conducted the American Religious Identification Survey, which analyzed religious trends occurring in the U.S. during the last 18 years. The results were not good for people of faith.
According to the survey, the groups that experienced the largest increase were those belonging to no religion, which had a 138 percent growth in the 18-year period. The number of non-religious groups, which includes atheists and agnostics, grew from 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.1 million in 2008.
While atheism and agnosticism have increased, the number of those who consider themselves Christians has decreased, with 86 percent claiming to be Christian in 1990 compared to the 76 percent in 2008.
One of the more interesting questions that is rarely answered sufficiently is “why?” For example, there has long been an obvious disparity between the level of religious belief in the United States vs. Europe. A current favorite explanation of that difference is that religious institutions act as a bulwark against economic downtimes and, as such, is not viewed as favorably in Europe where the welfare state tends to take on that role, but is popular in the United State which has the highest level of economic inquality of any modern industrial nation. Which would not explain at all why people are suddenly turning to secular ideologies over the past 20 years which have hardly seen a turn to a European-like welfare state.
Similarly, another claim is that since the United States doesn’t pick and choose religious winners with targeted subsidies and official approval, that competition between denominations and religions has meant those organizations had to innovate to meet the needs of people, whereas in Europe supposedly direct state funding and endorsement of specific denominations and religions led those winners to stagnate and become distanced from what people were genuinely looking for. Again, that doesn’t hold up very well if people are suddenly abandoning that religious market for non-religious views.
It would be interesting to see a survey of atheists, agnostics and other non-believers to see if there are one or two factors that stand out that are driving them away from religion.
Pew Poll: 25 Percent of 18-29 Year Olds Identify as Atheist / Agnostic / No Religion
American Atheists points to this Pew Poll that surveyed both old and young people in order to measure the similarities and differences in their lives. AA focuses on the stated difference between the two on the importance of religion in their lives,
Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults than younger adults. Two-thirds of adults ages 65 and older say religion is very important to them, compared with just over half of those ages 30 to 49 and just 44% of those ages 18 to 29. Moreover, among adults ages 65 and above, a third (34%) say religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, while just 4% say it has become less important and the majority (60%) say it has stayed the same. Among those who are over 65 and report having an illness or feeling sad, the share who say that religion has become more important to them rises to 43%.
American Atheist responded to this with,
“Translation: 56% of the younger generation thinks religion is not very important. That’s more than half, folks!”
I wanted to dig into the numbers to see if that excerpt was overstating the degree of irreligion among the young, and so downloaded the full report (1mb PDF) If anything, however, the situation is even better/worse (depending on your point of view) than that excerpt lets on — significant percentages of young people classified themselves as atheists/agnostics/no religion,
| Age Group | % Atheists / Agnostics/ No Religion |
| 18-29 | 25% |
| 30-49 | 18% |
| 50-64 | 13% |
| 65+ | 7% |
For the 18-29 year old group, more people identified themselves as atheist/agnostic/no religion than identified themselves as Catholic. This is, of course, entirely consistent with other surveys of religious belief that have shown dramatic increases in unbelief/lack of religious affiliation over the past couple decades, but is still kind of amazing to actually see accelerate.
CFI On UN Resolution Condemning “Defamation of Religions”
Once again the The United Nations Human Rights Council has revealed itself to be anything but, passing a resolution in a 23-11 vote condemning the “defamation of religions” and urging nation states to pass laws to stifle criticism of religion. Yes, that’s right, in the 21st century the United Nations is onboard in support of the worst sort of anti-blasphemy laws.
The Center for Inquiry issued a press release denouncing the resolution, saying,
“The concept of ‘defamation of religions’ is both absurd and dangerous.” said Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI’s president and chief executive officer. “Legally speaking, it’s gibberish, and any ban on so-called ‘defamation’ would effectively prevent any critique of religious beliefs or practices.”
In the opinion of a broad range of civil society organizations, these pronouncements do nothing but lend legitimacy to the repression of political and religious dissent around the world, particularly in Islamic countries. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, for example, which carry mandatory sentences of death or life imprisonment, are frequently used against members of the Ahmaddiya community, a peaceful minority Muslim sect.
Through its UN representative, Dr. Austin Dacey, CFI participated in the negotiations over the resolution during the March session of the Council in Geneva, and delivered an oral statement before the plenary meeting on March 24. Most worrisome, according to CFI, is that the present language equates religiously insulting speech with “advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence,” a category of speech that is prohibited by existing treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which have the force of law.
“Now the argument becomes very awkward for Europe,” said Dacey, “since many European states have laws against hate speech, Holocaust denial, and even blasphemy (for example, in Austria) that have been upheld by their regional human rights courts. The Islamic states will say they simply want to extend the same protection to all beliefs.”
