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POPSHoly Nonsense - Romney's worthless speech. Romney drones on about a barely relevant moment of emotion in 1774 and comes up with the glib slogan that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Any fool can think of an example where freedom exists without religion—and even more easily of an instance where religion exists without (or in negation of) freedom.
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POPSThe Year of Living Biblically What was your most creative loophole for following a “morally objectionable” or now-illegal rule? A.J.: I’d probably say there were two. First, stoning adulterers. The Bible doesn’t say the size of the stones, so I went with pebbles. This man came up to me in the park and asked me why I was dressed so strangely (I was wearing my sandals and white garments). I explained my project. He said, well I’m an adulterer, are you going to stone me? I said that would be great. So I took out my handful of pebbles. He actually grabbed the pebbles from my hand and threw them at me. So in retaliation, I tossed one back at him. An eye for an eye. Second, the proverbs say to punish your child with a rod of discipline. That’s not my parenting style. So I went on the Internet and bought a Nerf rod and hit him with that. But he thought it was hilarious, and hit me back with a whiffle bat, so the whole thing was a fiasco.
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POPSTaking Bible Stories Literally Suggested Bible stories for the next Barna survey I wonder what the result would be if the Bible stories were selected at random. What would happen, for example, if the following six stories were selected? God kills every Egyptian firstborn baby. Exodus 12:29-30 God sends fiery serpents to bite and kill his people (for complaining). Numbers 21:5-6 Moses commands his soldiers to kill every boy, woman, and female child (except for the virgins). Numbers 31:14-18 God orders the Israelites to kill every Amalekite man, woman, and child. 1 Samuel 15:2-3 David buys a wife with 200 Philistine foreskins. 1 Samuel 18:25-27 God kills husband and wife for not giving all their money to Peter. Acts 5:1-10 Would people believe in the literal truth of these stories? Would they still "believe that their personal trust" in the biblical God was "warranted" by them? Barna should do a survey to find out. (I'll bet the believers would drop from two thirds to two p
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POPSAre You Ready? This propaganda clip from 1941 about the impending rapture is good for a chuckle. The clip starts with the question: “Are you ready for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ? The greatest prophecy in the bible is not far from fulfillment!” I guess they had a very flexible definition of “not far”. It then describes the terrible problems we heathens will face when the rapture occurs… massive train crashes, walking zombies and… gasp… no milk deliveries! (hey, hang on, that last one has already happened!). Perhaps the worst consequence is that housework will remain undone because Christian maids have been taken to Heaven. WTF? Did someone just call us heathens lazy? -- heathen.tv
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POPSUSA: A Nation of Uneducated Morons So tell me, everyone: why are scientists supposed to respect religion, this corrupter of minds, this promulgator of lies, this damnable institution dedicated to delusion, in our culture? Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse.
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POPSThe Myth of Secular Moral Chaos - Sam Harris As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn’t also happen to have the Qur’an. It is important to point out that we decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses; we read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we (if we are civilized) decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary. So the choice before us is simple: we can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about ethics—availing ourselves of all the arguments and scientific insights that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse—or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.
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POPSDo You Really Believe That? Noah's Flood Edition If continual and arbitrary violations of physical law are invoked at every turn, any chain of events, no matter how ridiculous or impossible, can be allowed. But the sheer number of miracles that would be needed gives some idea of just how implausible the flood story is. Nevertheless, there are a significant number of theists who believe this silly story really happened and want to see it adopted into the scientific canon and taught in public schools as fact. Yet most of these people, I'd wager, want this only because they have been told by their trusted religious authorities that this story is true and have never thought through its implications for themselves. To theists who fit this description, I suggest you take a closer look at the story of Noah's flood and all it entails, and then ask yourselves: Do you really believe that?
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POPSSpanking kids is God's will swat children until their will is broken WOW! does caution against using instruments such as hairbrushes, cords or two-by-fours. Oh, well that's nice of them.
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POPSKnowledge is damaging to fundamentalism What I found most interesting was Altemeyer’s conclusion that actually reading the Bible can drive people away from fundamentalism. As Mary says: For the first problem: when the Bible is actually read, the actual text causes problems for the discerning reader. “The Bible was, they said, too often inconsistent, petty, boring, appalling, self-serving, or unbelievable.” Altemeyer found that although many fundamentalist Christians profess allegiance to an inerrant Bible, very few have actually read it completely for themselves and some who do find the inconsistencies too great.
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POPSEvidence of an American Theocratic Movement Essentially, theocracy refers to the primacy of religion in government and law. A theocratic society is one in which clergy rules and in which religious law trumps secular law. When American Christians think of theocracy, they typically think of Middle Eastern countries which are characterized by repressive religious governments. Such governments may have an "elected" leader, but the real power typically lies with Muslim clerics. Law is based on religious doctrine and tends to be misogynistic.
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POPSCollege Needs Biology Faculty Teach the evidence, but ignore it so that you arrive at the theologically 'correct' answer. Link to their Biblical Foundations Statement.
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