Is Faith Good for Us?

By Phil Zuckerman is an associate professor of sociology at College in California

Whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Sikh, there is one common belief that all religious fundamentalists share: worship of God and obedience to his laws are essential for a peaceful, healthy society. From Orthodox rabbis in the occupied West Bank to Wahhabi sheiks in Saudi Arabia , from the pope in Vatican City to Mormons in Salt Lake City , the lament is the same: God and his will must be at the center of everyone's lives in order to ensure a moral, prosperous, safe, collective existence.

Furthermore, fundamentalists agree that, when large numbers of people in a society reject God or fail to make him the center of their lives, societal disintegration is sure to follow. Every societal ill-whether crime, poverty, poor public education, or AIDS-is thus blamed on a lack of piety. A most disconcerting example of this worldview was expressed in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 , when Jerry Falwell blamed the terrorists attacks on America 's "throwing God out of the public square," further adding that "when a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

If this often-touted religious theory were correct-that a turning away from God is at the root of all societal ills-then we would expect to find the least religious nations on earth to be bastions of crime, poverty, and disease and the most religious nations to be models of societal health. A comparison of highly irreligious countries with highly religious countries, however, reveals a very different state of affairs. In reality, the most secular countries-those with the highest proportion of atheists and agnostics-are among the most stable, peaceful, free, wealthy, and healthy societies. And the most religious nations-wherein worship of God is in abundance-are among the most unstable, violent, oppressive, poor, and destitute.

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Religion

After denying Javon Thompson food and water for two days because he wouldn't say "Amen" after meals, the one-year-old's caretakers waited for a divine sign that their message had been heard: a resurrection.

For more than a week, police say in charging documents describing the scene, the child's lifeless body lay in the back room of an apartment. Queen Antoinette, the 40-year-old leader of a group that called itself 1 Mind Ministries, brought in her followers and told them to pray. God, she said, would raise Javon from the dead.

Instead, Javon's body began to decompose.

Chris Comer's Fight vs Creationism in Texas

Only in Texas could the state science director be fired for insisting on teaching only good science.

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Creationism Disproved

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DA charges parents who prayed as daughter died

An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.

Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said Madeline Neumann died Sunday.

"She got sicker and sicker until she was dead," he said.

Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.

Most parents would seek immediate medical help for a child who cannot speak, eat, drink, walk or breathe easily as was the case with Kara for about 48 hours before she died, Falstad said.

The girl's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to "apparently they didn't have enough faith," the police chief said. The couple face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Leilani Neumann, 40, told AP previously she never expected her daughter to die. The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people and have nothing against doctors, she said. They believed the key to healing "was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray," he said. The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected, the police chief said.

Police Chief Vergin said the parents once belonged to the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church but they became what he called religious "isolationists" involved in a prayer group of five people.

The most frighting quote above is "...they are not crazy religious people"; this my friends is complete loss of contact with reality scary crazy. I hope they get the maximum sentence. Murder is murder whether the weapon is a gun or religious fanaticism and stupidity.

Ono sues Expelled producers for using Lennon song

Yoko Ono has sued producers of a film starring actor Ben Stein that supports ''intelli- gent design,'' the belief that evolution was intended by an unknown being, claiming it illegally uses a song by ex-Beatle John Lennon.
Premise Media Corp. and Rampant Films didn't obtain a license to use ''Imagine,'' the song by Ono's late husband, in ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,'' released April 18, according to a suit filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
''Defendants have intentionally and willfully used the song without authorization because they knew that they would likely be unable to secure permission,'' Ono, 75, said in the complaint filed along with British record label EMI Group Plc.

Poll At Expelled Site Now Deleted

Do you think the theory of Intelligent Design should be taught in our education system?

Yes <1% (902 votes)
No 98% (419,526 votes)
Not sure <1% (181 votes)
What is it? 2% (8,912 votes)

On Bush, Bible, Fossils, Evolution, and Reality

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Epistemologies of Science and Religion

So, science is universal, while religion is rather local. One relies on an epistemology everyone in the world has access to; the other relies on an epistemology that barely works for that religion. To say of all religions that "each is valid" is to assert an absurdity. If each religion is separately valid, and all religions contradict each other, we are way past postmodernist silliness and out the other side into pure fiction and flights of imagination. It basically causes the very idea of knowledge to be degraded to the point that it no longer has the slightest meaning.

Governor of Illinois Moves a Million Dollars of State Funds to Baptist Church

The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.

Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist
activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before
the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

"This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God," Davis said. "Get
out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in
something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what
this state was built upon."

Disbelief in religion means you have "no right" to speak to members of government? Wow. And note the "D" after her name — she's a member of the party most (but definitely not all!) American atheists lean towards.
There's more on this exchange: it looks like Sherman kept his cool, while Davis spewed her hate.
Here is the audio, courtesy of the Illinois Information Service.

Did Texas Restoration Project Improperly Fund Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection campaign in 2006

The Rev. Laurence White and his wife are two of three directors on the Niemoller Foundation’s governing board. White is also chairman of the Texas Restoration Project. The foundation reported income of about $1.3 million in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year.
Expenditures covered Texas Restoration Project activities – including more than $700,000 for the six pastors’ events – and payments to organizations tied to the Texas Restoration Project.

Other ties between the Perry campaign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restoration Project include the following:

• The Niemoller Foundation’s expenditures in 2005 included nearly $475,000 paid to San Jacinto Public Affairs, an Austin-based firm that organized the Texas Restoration Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 million from work for the Republican Party of Texas and electoral candidates between July 2003 and November 2007.

• The Perry campaign subsequently communicated directly with thousands of pastors recruited by the Texas Restoration Project, suggesting coordination between the campaign and the Restoration Project.

• Press reports in 2005 indicated at least one of Gov. Perry’s pastors’ briefing speeches was considered a campaign event, with the Perry campaign releasing the transcript of his speech. (“Perry mobilizes evangelicals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Curry, Associated Press, June 11, 2005)

• The Niemoller Foundation doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Market Foundation and San Antonio-based Justice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pastors to Texas Restoration Project events. Free Market Foundation president Kelly Shackelford and Justice at the Gate director Susan Weddington served on Gov. Perry’s reelection steering committee.

• Days before the gubernatorial election in November 2006, the Texas Restoration Project sent e-mails to pastors on its mailing list, encouraging them to participate in a statewide conference call (which took place the following week) to “discuss what we can do this election cycle to motivate our pews to vote their values.” Shackelford and David Barton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Republican Party, were among the organizers and prominent speakers on the call.

Documents related to the Texas Freedom Network’s complaint to the IRS can be found at www.tfn.org/religiousright/irstxrestorationproject/index.php.

YouTube vs Pakistan

I found more info. "According to one PTA official, the video in discussion could concern a movie trailer whose author is Geert Wilders, a man with radical anti-Islamic convictions that so far have brought him numerous death threats." I will try a search on the term "Geert Wilders" I need to narrow the search I will try "YouTube Geert Wilders"

The last search turns up a number of videos.

1.

2.

3.

4.

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Theocracy Shuts Down YouTube Worldwide

I am trying to find the Pakistan anti-Islamic video, that was the Reason that caused Pakistan to decide to shut down internet access to YouTube. A search on YouTube for "Pakistan anti-Islamic video" turns up the following vids. But I don't know which if any is the one Pakistan objected to.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Many users around the world could not access YouTube Inc.'s site for about two hours on Sunday. The video-sharing company blamed the outage on erroneous routing information introduced by a Pakistani Internet service provider. Pakistani authorities ordered ISPs there to block the site on Friday.
Traffic to YouTube was misrouted for around two hours, rendering the site inaccessible for many users around the world, YouTube said today.
"We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan," the company said, adding that it is still investigating the problem to prevent it from happening again.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered the country's ISPs to block users' access to YouTube on Friday because of an inflammatory anti-Islamic video on the site, said Wahaj us Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers, in a telephone interview.

"If the video is provocative, then it is better it is removed, rather than provoke unrest in Pakistan," said Siraj, who added that he did not know the contents of the video.

US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

...Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment. "He said: 'You guys are being a problem and problems can be removed,'...

A campaign group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is waiting for the Pentagon to respond to a lawsuit filed in a Kansas federal court on Hall's behalf.
It alleges a "pernicious pattern and practice" of infringement of religious liberties in the military. The group's founder, former Air Force lawyer Mikey Weinstein, said he has documented 6,800 testimonies by military personnel -- nearly all of them Christians -- of sometimes punitive or humiliating attempts to make them accept a fundamentalist evangelical interpretation of Christianity.

"It violates title seven of the US code for an employer to push their Biblical world view on an employee," he said. "But it's a trillion times worse when that is not just your shift manager at Starbucks but that is your military superior."

He singles out one of the major Christian groups in the military, the Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF).

"The joint standards of conduct for the Armed Forces and military equal
opportunity policies address the freedom of religion, avoiding
discrimination because of religion."

But Weinstein argued that most personnel are "too terrified" to speak out.

"When you actually fight against them, they make your life hell," said
Hall, adding he has been passed over for promotion since launching his
lawsuit. "I can't get a leg up no matter what I do."

A former military chaplain of a prestigious US military college reported being
prevented from leading worship after disagreeing with the fundamentalist stance of other officials.

"I am not ready to say that if someone does not profess Christ as their savior that they are going to hell ... That got a lot of people angered,"...

Looks like Robertson Prediction of 'Mass Killing' was wrong.

Pat Robertson predicted ... that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.
"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during
his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian
Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it
will be something like that."
Robertson said God told him
during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions
of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place
sometime after September.

Afghan Student to Die for Blasphemy

An Afghanistan court has sentenced a university student in Kabul to death for blasphemy for distributing anti-Islamic material among fellow students. Pervez Kambux, 23, was arrested in October and was expelled from the journalism program at Balkh University, ... The report said the majority of judges in Afghanistan from lower courts up through the Supreme Court are Islamic mullahs or other religious appointees.
Last year, the government hurriedly flew a man who had converted to Christianity out of the country to Italy when demonstrators called for his execution, the report said.

TEA Director of Science Forced to Resign

A Report of Texas Citizens for Science
by Steven Schafersman

November 29, 2007

True Reason for the Forced Resignation
Thus, it is easy to conclude that Chris was forced to resign because someone wanted her out of the TEA--not because she violated a formal written policy, but because she DID violate the preposterous and unethical verbal policy of neutrality to Creationism. I doubt that this policy is written anywhere, but I hope another FOIA request will reveal its official existence. Reporters should interview Associate Commissioner Susan Barnes about her September address to TEA staff. She may still have her notes available (unless she has shredded them, which has been the official TEA policy since...September). A reporter should read back to her what Monica Martinez wrote, and ask Associate Commissioner Barnes to explain why violating a policy that the TEA "must remain neutral" on--not publicizing or seeming to "endorse" a group that "opposes teaching creationism"--is the same as "you are not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency in any way that might compromise the transparency and/or integrity of the upcoming TEKS development and revision process." I, for one, can't see that these are the same thing, but apparently Monica Martinez and Susan Barnes think they are.

Scandal Brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.
She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."
...Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university's nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

The fall of the Godmongers

I highly recommend reading this article.

Praise Jesus, it's the collapse of evangelical Christian rule in America. Rejoice!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 21, 2007
...Because right now, there is perhaps no greater item we as a struggling human ant farm can be grateful for, no single social emetic we can look to for inspiration or hope or a happy tingly sensation in our collective groinal region indicating a possible move away from our long-standing Dick-Cheney-in-hell attitude of shrill bleakness, alarmism and religious righteousness than the simply wonderful implosion of the evangelical Christian right that's happening right now in America.
...They're the throngs of megachurch lemmings Karl Rove masterfully manipulated and rallied and whored to Bush's very narrow advantage in two elections.

They're the ones who've made all the headlines and influenced all sorts of laws and national policy changes lo, this past half-decade concerning everything from stem cell research to gay marriage to evolution, sanitized school textbooks to failed abstinence programs to RU-486 restrictions to silly anti-science rhetoric, the ones who gasped in horror at a woman's bare nipple and made a disgusting mockery of Terri Schiavo and actually applauded when John Ashcroft spent $8,000 of taxpayer money to throw some heavy drapery over the shamefully exposed breasts of the bronze (female) Spirit of Justice statue in the Hall of Justice. And so on.

They are, in short, responsible for a great many of the most notable social and intellectual embarrassments in America since the new millennium took hold, and rest assured, we and the rest of the civilized world shall recall their bleak accomplishments for much of our natural born lives, and shudder.
...Because this is the delightful thing about the fundamentalist worldview (and, for that matter just about any strict religious worldview you can name), the thing that absolutely and forever guarantees its frequent and eventual downfall: It can never be sated.

It's true. No matter how clamped down we as a culture become, no matter how much misinterpreted Biblical dogma we're forced to swallow, no matter how many insidious laws are passed limiting behaviors and restricting independent thought and repressing sexuality and banning dildos in Texas, it will never be enough.

And why? Because the fundamentalist mind-set is not so much a firm and rational set of beliefs based on thoughtful interpretation of strict Biblical screed as it is, well, a paranoid wallowing in fear. Fear of the Other, fear of change, of progress, of the new and different and young and the sexual and the truly spiritual.

A Little Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog

By Jacques Sterchi

Rue89 in partnership with La Liberté, Fribourg

Monday 17 September 2007

In 2003, University of Lausanne theology professor Thomas Römer received
a telephone call from the Elysée. Jacques Chirac's advisers wanted to
know more about Gog and Magog ... two mysterious names pronounced by George
W. Bush while he was attempting to convince France to enter the war in Iraq
at his side. In its September edition, the University of Lausanne's review,
Allez savoir, reveals this story that could seem fantastic did it not, as Allez
savoir's Editor-in-Chief Jocelyn Rochat emphasizes, reveal the religious underpinnings
of Bush's policy.

Apocalyptic prophecy: Bush would have declared to Chirac that Gog and Magog
were at work in the Middle East and that the Biblical prophecies were in the
process of being fulfilled. That was several weeks before the intervention in
Iraq. The French president, to whom the names of Gog and Magog meant nothing,
was stupefied.

In Allez savoir, Thomas Römer details: Gog and Magog are two creatures
who appear in Genesis, and especially in the most arcane chapters of the Old
Testament Book of Ezekiel. An apocalyptic prophecy of a global army giving final
battle in Israel.

...

Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.Go to Original