Month: July 2009

Report: North Korea Publicly Executes Christian Woman for Distributing Bible

LINK While we usually address church-state issues that involve violations of the civil liberties of nontheists, this story highlights an extreme example of the reverse sort of issue, where the lack of government neutrality apparently harmed a theist (to put it mildly). Anyone who claims to be a freethinker or a supporter of church-state separation Report: North Korea Publicly Executes Christian Woman for Distributing Bible

Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Including the Idiots

We’re still dealing with organized ignorance in high places here in Texas. Specifically, as I’ve mentioned in prior posts, our State Board of Education is stuffed with fundamentalist activists. Their latest effort is to make sure that social studies textbooks emphasize how America was “founded on biblical principles.” Below is my letter to the Houston Everything’s Bigger in Texas, Including the Idiots

Liberal converts

It’s generally the more conservative, even fundamentalist, versions of religions that strenuously evangelize and seek converts. So, other than bringing up children in the faith, how do more liberal religions reproduce themselves? I imagine there’s a good deal of stealing from more conservative movements. For example, a college student can come to think scriptural literalism Liberal converts

Homeopathy bashing

Well, here we concentrate the higher class of superstition: religion. We shouldn’t neglect the low-class kind like the basic pseudosciences, however. Such as alt-med. This is a very funny satire of homeopathy.

Falling in love with gurus?

I’m reading a book by a journalist, consisting of interviews with Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish sect leader, together with her fawning commentary on Gülen. It’s quite embarrassing really. Gülen speaks in banalities and produces shallow “spiritual” platitudes. He does some hamfisted punditry and generally demonstrates that he has, well, let’s say intellectual limitations. His main Falling in love with gurus?

Karen Armstrong rubbished

Vic Stenger will have a new book out soon, called The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason. (He’s retired, so he’s allowed to crank them out.) One of the things I was not too successful in having Stenger change during the course of writing was a few passages where he relied heavily Karen Armstrong rubbished