A friend: “Happy Easter! It is a true celebration; not of candy and hidden eggs but of salvation and eternal life. If you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, what better time than now?”
That would be, “Never.” It’s no more real today than any other day of the year.
Apparently only Jesus can ever use a certain name, or title, or something.
Establishment Clause, much?
Spotted in Boulder this morning: a Subaru Legacy with the following appurtenances
<vader>Impressive.</vader>
Yes, Pope Francis is declining to judge homosexuals. Great, he has a slightly less Neanderthal view than his predecessors. But is the Catholic Church going to recognize gay marriage? Ordain gay priests? Nope. And the Catholics still oppose both abortion in every circumstance and contraception. So, congratulations on personally being slightly less evil, I guess.
Religion remains a blight on humanity.
It’s not that there’s any shortage of things to be angry about, but I’ve been too busy to be angry publicly. Though one of Greta Christina’s excellent points about engaging people who are Wrong On the Internet is that it only really makes sense to do it in public, since your audience is really fence-sitting third parties; you’re unlikely to convince anybody in a given one-on-one interaction.
I did have to smack down one of my online friends, a devout and vocal Catholic, the other day when he parroted the stupid idea that Democrats want to “encourage as much abortion as possible.” That’s such a ridiculous straw man. He (naturally) echoed many more pro-life talking points during the conversation, and it wound up going to the point of him proclaiming that science and religion are compatible because there have been (and are) many religious scientists, which is an idea that has been soundly debunked time and again, particularly by Jerry Coyne. The conversation just petered out, so I can’t claim any kind of victory, but I just couldn’t let that pass unchallenged.
Here we go again. The hostage standoff in Alabama ended with the 5-year-old hostage safe… and people are calling it “prayers granted.”
Was God the one storming that bunker? No, it was the police. If things had gone horribly wrong, and the hostage had died, would the headlines read, “God denies prayers, kills little boy?” No, they would read “Gunman kills five-year-old.”
It’s a great racket when you always get all of the credit and none of the blame.
A Facebook friend posted a link to this petition on my wall. The entire content of the ‘petition’?
To: US GOVERNMENT
PUT PRAYER BACK INTO SCHOOLS
IF PRAYER IS PUT BACK INTO SCHOOLS KIDS WOULD BE BETTER AND DO BETTER IN SCHOOLS
And, yes, of course it’s in all capitals.
Let’s quickly count some of the problems with this, shall we?
I don’t know why anyone educated on the issue would consider this a good idea, or why anyone would believe I would support it. But as I write this, there are nearly 100,000 signatures on the petition. And, as Ed Brayton likes to point out, some of these people vote.
Look, I’m genuinely thrilled that the Boy Scouts of America are now considering ending their “no gays” policy. It’s long overdue, but it’s a step in the right direction, taking them closer to the Girl Scouts’ policy of equality. But they’re hanging on to their ban on atheists, so I’m still out.
As an Eagle Scout myself, it’s been very painful to me to watch the organization solidify its discriminatory stances over the years. Maybe they’ll eventually wise up on religion as well, but I’m not holding my breath.
I went into a busy few weeks there, with the WFTDA roller derby championships immediately followed by the Denver EDUCAUSE conference, which in turn was immediately followed by a fairly major disaster at my workplace, leading into recovery and mitigation planning, taking us into this holiday week. I’ll probably chill out for a couple more days and then resume shaking my tiny fist at irrationality in the world.
Read At Your Own Risk 