Archive for the category "Religion"
 Can’t make this stuff up, folks. I mean, you could, but everybody would think you were, well, making stuff up.
On tonight’s episode of Modern Family (perhaps TV’s best sitcom), one of the storylines deals with what happens when a young child starts using curse words. One of America’s more prominent gatekeepers of the public morality, the Parents Television council, immediately lurched into a galloping conniption. That they haven’t actually seen the episode, and hence, have no fudging idea what they’re screeching about, is beside the point.
“It’s not suitable language for a child that young in the real world, and it’s not suitable language for a child that young on television, either.” Full story »
 It’s over now. The Patriots completely decimated the Broncos last night, 45 to 10, and it wasn’t that close. They eased off the throttle in the third quarter and coasted in. They toyed with the Broncs: at one point Brady quick kicked on third down, a surprise tactic usually used by teams unable to get a real punt off due to defensive pressure on fourth down. In this case, New England was mocking the Broncos, giving them the ball back before they had to. Just for fun.
It was as thorough a beatdown as we have seen. And Timmy was completely overmatched.
So what did the Tebowistas learn? Nothing, probably.
The Tebowistas did not see the same game the rest of of saw. Full story »
 So it’s nearing closing time at the Evangelical Bar and Grill and the pickin’s are gettin’ mighty slim: 2 moderate Mormons, a twice-divorced Catholic convert, a dowdy Catholic true-believer, a diminished Dominionist who smells of Texas political manure and desperation, and a Libertarian coyote with a gaggle of questionable admirers. What’s a good, solid pillar of the conservative power structure supposed to do?
Why, go lookin’ for Mr. Right, of course.
As Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in an interview with NPR broadcast this morning, “Before we marry the guy next door, don’t you think we ought to have a fling with a tall dark stranger and see if he can support us in the manner to which we’d like to be accustomed? And if he can’t, we can always marry the steady beau who lives next door.”
Full story »
OK, it’s pretty well documented that I am a non-believer in the Miracle at Mile High. I think he is the second coming all right, but the second coming of Bobby Douglass and much of his success is due to the fact that Bobby Douglasses only come along every fifty years or so, and thus profit from novelty. Look at the old footage of Bobby reading the defensive end, and faking the hand off to the running back, then racing up the middle or throwing a wobbly duck twenty yards down the field, and it looks just like Timmy. Same size, same left-handedness, same same.
And that’s OK. It’s clear now that Tim is a fungible NFL quarterback. He threw for 316 yards (yes, yes, John 3:16 and all that) last week against a pretty good defense. 300 yards is 300 yards. The guy threw for 300 yards against a quality NFL defense. I was wrong. He is an NFL quarterback. A great one? Probably not. Full story »
Not that they’re related, but the more or less concurrent rise of libertarian Ron Paul and demise of prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens give one pause. The sympathy that this author, as a progressive, feels for libertarians’ anti-war stance parallels that I feel for atheists’ anti-religion stance. But I not only lack sympathy for, but am fundamentally opposed to, what motivates those beliefs on both their parts.
Libertarians’ opposition to war is motivated by the belief that that a state should keep its gaze and its money within its own borders, no matter the carnage overseas. Atheists’ opposition to religion is motivated by the lack of belief in — however one cares to describe it — God, a higher power, or a greater intelligence. Full story »
Have you seen the vid on Youtube called “Iowa Nice”? If not, let’s start there.
The producer of the video, Scott Siepker, is an Iowa State University grad and host of Iowa Outdoors on Iowa Public Television. Full story »
 by Robert Becker
Is “Higgs boson” a creative particle or energy field? Can we thus infer an “anti-God particle,” as anti-matter opposes matter, or dark energy battles gravity?
Any covenant with Godhead, in my book, comes down to Creation. Genesis, the source of time, space, and being; in short, existence. Especially our piddling existence. Without creation as we know it, we’d be deficient in mass, not even rocks; or with multiverse speculations, we could also be someone else, who knows where, gabbing with utter aliens. Because we esteem existence (over all the sorry alternatives), let us greet the New Year by honoring the force that could well have made something real out of, well, something not. The “God Particle.” Hallelujah!
If this particle is a particle. Full story »
 I do not believe in God. Still, arguing against God, as Dawkins, Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens have done, is a mug’s game. Whether it’s Allah, or dead relatives, or the constellations, or stupid stuff from movies (the Force,) belief in an extrinsic, intercessionary force seems to be a basic human need.
And where there’s a consumer need, an industry will emerge, whether the product is ringtones or salvation. Religion is the business of god. We have had organized religion in every society and every geography at every time in history, and we always will. To quote myself, if we abolished every religion at midnight, we’d have a thousand more by sunrise.
These days we are absolutely drowning in spirituality and religions. Full story »
Fischer: ‘Allah is a demon god of darkness, violence, death, and destruction’
Right Wing Watch
December 23, 2011
Considering Bryan Fischer makes so much hateful noise, is it any wonder that it’s relatively difficult to get in touch with him? More’s the pity. I had hoped to correct him for his error and apprise him of a little bit of his own scripture. Maybe this post or one like it will come to his attention, not that I think it will actually do any good. Meanwhile, this post is reaching you. That is what matters.
Disclosure: I, myself, am not an adherent of any faith. I am an agnostic. Full story »
Televangelist Pat Robertson doesn’t mince words when it comes to faith and this time is no exception. The outspoken faith-keeper blasted Saturday Night Live‘s recent skit of Denver Bronco’s quarterback Tim Tebow on Monday, calling the parody a “disgusting” attack on Christianity.
“There’s an anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting and I think Saturday Night Live did a parody of that, had Jesus come in,” Robertson said.
Robertson even went on to suggest that if SNL had done a similar parody mocking Muslims, there would be “bodies on the street.”
This morning it was reported that Pat Robertson slammed the SNL skit making fun of Tebow and chalked up much of the anti-Tebow sentiment to “anti-Christian” bigotry. And he’s right.
There are two basic reasons not to like Tebow. First, he’s not a conventional quarterback. His motion takes a week to complete and the resulting throw is pathetic. I’ve seen better velocity on stuff coming out of freshmen’s mouths after a frat party. Full story »
Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62.
If Chris Corner’s tribute to the man seems conflicted, that is perhaps appropriate. Full story »
by Robert Becker
The key to unabashed cheerfulness, like mine, is moderating expectations. Set low enough standards, as some ancient codger must have mused, and you’ll never be disappointed. Full story »
 From Michelle Goldberg at Newsweek:
Like many evangelicals in Iowa, Steve Deace, an influential conservative radio host, is wrestling with the possibility that Newt Gingrich may be the most viable standard bearer for family-values voters in the next election. It’s a conundrum, he says, that many others are also grappling with. “Maybe the guy in the race that would make the best president is on his third marriage,” he says. “How do we reconcile that?”
…
“Under normal circumstances, Gingrich would have some real problems with the social-conservative community,” says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. “But these aren’t normal circumstances.” Full story »
 OK.
I, and most people who think they know something about football, have been pretty vocal about the fact that Tebow sucks as a quarterback. The people who disagree with us insist his intangibles make up for his lack of tangibles, an argument so absurd that we have trouble getting our heads around it. If tangibles don’t matter, maybe I should not have been so quick to dismiss a career as a porn star.
Of course, what drives most of us crazy is that the people who are making the argument for Tebow happen to be not only white, but bat-shit crazy evangelicals, raising the suspicion in our minds that maybe this isn’t about football and logic at all, but about racism or religion. After all, for years after blacks were finally allowed to play professional football they weren’t allowed to play quarterback because they lacked intangibles like intelligence, unlike white quarterbacks like Terry Bradshaw and Kerry Collins, the latter of whom was so smart that he thought his offensive line (the guys charged with protecting him) would enjoy hearing racist jokes. But Kerry failed to notice his O-line was black, and the next game they looked less like football players and more like matadors letting bulls rush by. In other words, the intelligence thing was yet another bit of back door discrimination. Full story »
I had my editorial all planned out in my head. First, Mississippi was going to be the first state to approve the thoroughly idiotic state constitutional amendment defining a fertilized egg (a zygote) as a person. Second, I… well, I never got past that first step, because Mississippi voters did the smart thing and voted down an amendment that would have made pregnant women second-class citizens at best, and livestock at worst. Full story »
“He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.” (Proverbs 13:24)
“Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” (Proverbs 23:13-14)
By now, you’ve probably heard about the video of Texas judge William Adams beating his disabled, then-16 year-old daughter, Hillary, with a belt. You may even have seen the video. If not, a caution: it’s every bit as disturbing as reports would lead you to believe. We’re not used to seeing this kind of domestic brutality on YouTube, especially when it’s punctuated by lines like ”lay down or I’ll spank you in your fucking face.”
I initially ignored this story. I heard the headlines, made the same assumptions as a lot of people probably did and moved along. But today the story hooked me back in when I saw that Adams, in the process of blaming the victim (she only released the tape because he was cutting her off and taking away her Mercedes, he says), suggesting that the footage looked “worse than it was.” Full story »
 Some time back I called Tim Tebow a “faith-based” quarterback. In that article I took on a prominent sports commentator who had lost all perspective and tried to address the ways in which the questions of religion and quarterbacking ability were getting all twisted up around the second-year Denver Broncos QB.
Since that post, some things have changed and others haven’t. The main thing that has changed is that, after an underwhelming first few games, the Doncs have made Tebow the starter. Which is good. First off, Kyle Orton may be a much better quarterback, but he was playing like hell. Full story »
 Some people think I hate Christians. My occasional comments on Tim Tebow probably have something to do with that perception, although you have to aggressively project a hater stereotype on me to make that work. Which a lot of Christians are happy to do, make no mistake.
I won’t lie, though. I’m very much not a Christian myself and I’ve read my Dawkins and my Harris. I’m a persistent fan of evidence, and I’m not idiot enough to think that we know all there is to know. In particular I’m intrigued by the study of energy and the question of whether perhaps it coheres once we die. But this is a question of science, not blind religion. I feel no particular need to believe in a “higher power” or in the existence of a spirit realm. I’m certainly spiritual, but since spiritualism as expressed by humanist awareness is more than I’ll ever unravel, I have no need for superstition. Full story »
 by Robert S. Becker
Am I the Great Rudder — or What?
If his stumbling, not ready-for-prime-time worsens, Rick “Treat ‘Em Ugly” Perry will soon be cornered and dangerous. That’s when flinty hardscrabble guys squint, then draw, pumping out enough audacity of rogue to win GOP primaries. No more Mr. Smiley Nice Guy conservative, clinging to compassionate shreds — like educating immigrant kids, immunizing girls, pooh-poohing secession — or not throwing in derringers with school lunches. Hey, don’t 6th graders have drug, crime, bullying, fashion, and pocket money issues dying for resolution?
The power right anoints Perry the most “electable” fringe purist — so step aside, little crazy lady from Minnesota. Full story »
|
