Freakonomics author Steven Levitt is dismayed by the rush of anti-god books recently.
I’m not religious. I don’t think much about God, except when I am in a pinch and need some special favors. I have no particular reason to think he’ll deliver, but I sometimes take a shot anyway. Other than that, I’m just not that interested in God. I’m definitely not interested enough to go out and buy books explaining to me why I shouldn’t believe in God….
There’s more (including a list of books).
Why wonder for the rest of your life whether you’re headed to heaven or hell. Take this quick quiz at NeedGod.com and find out now.
The quiz has too many layers at the end, but still it won’t take you more than a minute or two.
Good luck and answer carefully, your eternal life is on the line.
By the way, for NewMexiKen, hell —
While this is something that is extremely tragic and far from God’s ultimate desire for any person, the Bible is clear that the place of punishment for those who do not turn from their sins is Hell.
But, no, hell doesn’t worry me —
Perhaps you feel safe because you don’t believe in Hell. This can be likened to standing in the middle of a busy highway and shouting, “I don’t believe in trucks!” Your belief or disbelief in trucks will not change reality.
Link via Jesus’ General. It will be fun being in hell with the General’s inner frenchman.
The beginning of the review of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
As anyone who has read Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked” or seen the subsequent Broadway show can attest, the Wicked Witch of the West was framed. Elphaba, as Maguire calls her, wasn’t really wicked at all. She was a good girl set up by the powers that be (in this case, the Wizard) for, among other things, the green color of her skin. So it goes with the recently unveiled Gospel of Judas, which posits a theory as impertinent as Maguire’s about the wickedest character in Christendom.
“Jerry Falwell’s greatest legacy? For me, it will always be his Institute of Biblical Studies.”
John D. Spalding signs up and shares his experience.
From dooce, a link to an usual traffic report.
It’s not like that here in Albuquerque, where our traffic reporter is known as Helen Wheels. No, really. (Say it out loud.)
Thanks to oneken for the link.
From a review in The New Yorker of recent books on the dangers of religion:
And now there is “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
,” by Christopher Hitchens, which is both the most articulate and the angriest of the lot. Hitchens is a British-born writer who lives in Washington, D.C., and is a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate. He thrives at the lectern, where his powers of rhetoric and recall enable him to entertain an audience, go too far, and almost get away with it. These gifts are amply reflected in “God Is Not Great.”
Hitchens is nothing if not provocative. Creationists are “yokels,” Pascal’s theology is “not far short of sordid,” the reasoning of the Christian writer C. S. Lewis is “so pathetic as to defy description,” Calvin was a “sadist and torturer and killer,” Buddhist sayings are “almost too easy to parody,” most Eastern spiritual discourse is “not even wrong,” Islam is “a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,” Hanukkah is a “vapid and annoying holiday,” and the psalmist King David was an “unscrupulous bandit.”
Is he ever in for a surprise.
I would be quite content to go to their children’s bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to “respect” their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone.
Christopher Hitchens in an excerpt from his new book, God Is Not Great.
“Just wait until Chocolate Jesus melts. I bet it’ll be into the shape of the Virgin Mary. Then everyone will really go nuts.”
Mama Shakes quoted at Shakespeare’s Sister.
Although the evidence contained in the film and book is hardly definitive, it is compelling.
Inscribed in Hebrew, Latin or Greek, six boxes — taken from a 2,000-year-old cave discovered in 1980 during excavation for a housing project in Talpiyot, south of Jerusalem — bear the names: Yeshua [Jesus] bar Yosef [son of Joseph]; Maria [the Latin version of Miriam, which is the English Mary]; Matia [the Hebrew equivalent of Matthew, a name common in the lineage of both Mary and Joseph]; Yose [the Gospel of Mark refers to Yose as a brother of Jesus]; Yehuda bar Yeshua, or Judah, son of Jesus; and in Greek, Mariamne e mara, meaning ‘Mariamne, known as the master.’ According to Harvard professor François Bovon, interviewed in the film, Mariamne was Mary Magdalene’s real name.
There’s much more at The Globe and Mail.
[Ash Wednesday] probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead — or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure — of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year.
Forty days of Lent to mark Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
Forty you say. But today is February 21 and Easter is April 8. That’s 46 days (four this week, then six more weeks). 6 times 7 equals 42 plus 4 equals 46
Aha! But the six Sundays don’t count. (No one told me that when I was a kid giving up candy for Lent.)
The date for Ash Wednesday, of course, is determined by counting back 46 days from the date for Easter Sunday.
The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.
The ecclesiastical rules are:
- Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
- this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
- the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.
resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25.
The equinox this year is March 20th in the Western Hemisphere (March 20, 6:07 PM MDT).
There are well-known season-long Carnival celebrations in Europe and Latin America, including Nice, France; Cologne, Germany; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The best-known celebration in the U.S. is in New Orleans and the French-Catholic communities of the Gulf Coast. Mardi Gras came to the New World in 1699, when a French explorer arrived at the Mississippi River, about 60 miles south of present day New Orleans. He named the spot Point du Mardi Gras because he knew the holiday was being celebrated in his native country that day.
Eventually the French in New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras with masked balls and parties, until the Spanish government took over in the mid-1700s and banned the celebrations. The ban continued even after the U.S. government acquired the land but the celebrations resumed in 1827. The official colors of Mardi Gras, with their roots in Catholicism, were chosen 10 years later: purple, a symbol of justice; green, representing faith; and gold, to signify power.
Mardi Gras literally means “Fat Tuesday” in French. The name comes from the tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last day of Carnival. The day is also known as Shrove Tuesday (from “to shrive,” or hear confessions), Pancake Tuesday and fetter Dienstag. The custom of making pancakes comes from the need to use up fat, eggs and dairy before the fasting and abstinence of Lent begins.
From Functional Ambivalent:
Beliefnet takes a look at the Christianity of George Washington:
What do the knowable facts show? A portrait not likely to be satisfying to either extreme in the culture war – a spiritual man who believed God was protecting him and the nation, and yet who showed disinterest in and sometimes disdain for important facets of Christianity.In some ways, the Father of Our Country bears a striking resemblance to a lot of other fathers:
He was a casual observer of the Sabbath and a semi-regular attendee of church – a little more than once a month, according to Boller’s review of Washington’s diaries. For instance, Washington attended church four times in the first five months of 1760 and 15 times in the year 1768. Sometimes bad weather prevented him from making the lengthy trip but there’s also evidence that Washington visited friends, traveled or went foxhunting instead of to church.He did all of that because there were no golf courses within riding distance from Mt. Vernon.
Read the whole fascinating thing here.
A 50-year-old Dallas man whose conviction of raping a boy in 1982 cost him nearly half his life in prison and on parole won a court ruling Wednesday declaring him innocent. He said he was not angry, “because the Lord has given me so much.”
NewMexiKen understands why an individual might NEED to feel this way after 24 years wrongly in prison, but I’d have to say instead that I was angry, “because the Lord has really screwed me.”
Shakespeare’s Sister has the story on the ice formation from heaven:
An ice formation inside a Morton, Texas, grocery store’s freezer is prompting tears from people who see it and has apparently answered the prayers of some visitors, according to a Local 6 News report.
Go read the article and see the photo of this thing and tell me there isn’t at least one other interpretation of the shape of this ice formation.
Guadalupe is, strictly speaking, the name of a picture, but the name was extended to the church containing the picture and to the town that grew up around the church. It makes the shrine, it occasions the devotion, it illustrates Our Lady. It is taken as representing the Immaculate Conception, being the lone figure of the woman with the sun, moon, and star accompaniments of the great apocalyptic sign with a supporting angel under the crescent. The word is Spanish Arabic, but in Mexico it may represent certain Aztec sounds.
Its tradition is long-standing and constant, and in sources both oral and written, Indian and Spanish, the account is unwavering. The Blessed Virgin appeared on Saturday 9 December 1531 to a 55 year old neophyte named Juan Diego, who was hurrying down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City. She sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood. She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop’s answer. The bishop did not immediately believed the messenger, had him cross-examined and watched, and he finally told him to ask the lady who said she was the mother of the true God for a sign. The neophyte agreed readily to ask for sign desired, and the bishop released him.
Juan was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an uncle, who was dying of fever. Indian medicine had failed, and Bernardino seemed at death’s door. At daybreak on Tuesday 12 December 1531, Juan ran to nearby Saint James’s convent for a priest. To avoid the apparition and the untimely message to the bishop, he slipped round where the well chapel now stands. But the Blessed Virgin crossed down to meet him and said, “What road is this thou takest son?” A tender dialogue ensued. She reassured Juan about his uncle, to whom she also briefly appeared and instantly cured. Calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she told Juan to return to the bishop. He asked the sign for the sign he required. Mary told him to go to the rocks and gather roses. Juan knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma, a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians, he came back. The Holy Mother rearranged the roses, and told him to keep them untouched and unseen until he reached the bishop. When he met with Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign to the bishop. As he unfolded his cloak the roses, fresh and wet with dew, fell out. Juan was startled to see the bishop and his attendants kneeling before him. The life size figure of the Virgin Mother, just as Juan had described her, was glowing on the tilma. The picture was venerated, guarded in the bishop’s chapel, and soon after carried in procession to the preliminary shrine.
The coarsely woven material of the tilme which bears the picture is as thin and open as poor sacking. It is made of vegetable fibre, probably maguey. It consists of two strips, about seventy inches long by eighteen wide, held together by weak stitching. The seam is visible up the middle of the figure, turning aside from the face. Painters have not understood the laying on of the colours. They have deposed that the “canvas” was not only unfit but unprepared, and they have marvelled at apparent oil, water, distemper, etc. colouring in the same figure. They are left in equal admiration by the flower-like tints and the abundant gold. They and other artists find the proportions perfect for a maiden of fifteen. The figure and the attitude are of one advancing. There is flight and rest in the eager supporting angel. The chief colours are deep gold in the rays and stars, blue green in the mantle, and rose in the flowered tunic.
(The Catholic Community Forum, taken from a 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article)
So we’ve seen Pastor Ted Haggard‘s (alleged) Field Guide To The Seven Deadly Sins released by dribs and drabs over the last couple of days. But just to make it clear that people like Haggard should be treated with nothing less than the absolute pie-in-the-face ridicule they so richly deserve, see this clip of him from a while back, prior to this week’s festivities. This isn’t religion. This is a psychological cargo cult that provides a marvelous environment for fakes and charlatans to act out twisted psychological problems in a fashion that would have embarrassed the boys in Led Zeppelin. This isn’t a minister of the gospel. The man is a medievalist loon. “Personal relationship with his Lord and Savior,” my aunt Fanny. If he has one, it’s pretty plainly dismal and dysfunctional. And, remember, the president of the United States takes advice from a guy who believes that Gandhi is in hell. And people laughed at Nancy Reagan for hiring an astrologer, and Hillary Clinton for her chats with Eleanor Roosevelt. The most underrated of our essential founding documents is James Madison‘s “Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” from 1785. Somebody should get up in Pastor Ted’s well-upholstered pulpit and read it to the assembled mooing next Sunday. And then they should, all of them, leave us the hell alone.
Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind winked at his wife and gave her a reassuring smile as he was led away to jail.
Jo Hovind clutched the necktie he had been wearing. She kept her eyes on her husband until he was out of sight.
A 12-person jury deliberated for 2½ hours on Thursday before finding the couple guilty of all counts in their tax-fraud case.
Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.
Jo Hovind was charged and convicted in 44 of the counts involving evading bank-reporting requirements. She faces up to 225 years in prison but was allowed to remain free pending the couple’s sentencing on Jan. 9.
NewMexiKen thought about starting a new category for posts: “Hypocrisy and hypocrites.”
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
— Richard Dawkins quoted at The Official Richard Dawkins Website. Dawkins is blogging his book tour for The God Delusion.
This Washington signing was remarkable for the number who bought not just one copy of The God Delusion but up to half a dozen. ‘Christmas presents?’ I inquired of one man. ‘Winter solstice’, he instantly corrected me.
Forget the appearance of Christmas toys and decorations at Costco in August. Here’s this year’s first idiocy complaining that stores are leaving Christmas out of the holidays; this from the American Family Association.
“Last week the first Christmas ad came out, and that was for Sam’s Club, owned by the Wal-Mart Stores Corporation,” the AFA spokesman explains. “The ad is clearly meant to promote Christmas decorations and Christmas tree items,” he says, “but Sam’s Club refuses to refer to Christmas as Christmas. They simply use the generic term holiday.”
And it’s not even Labor Day.
Maybe Sam’s should just go with “Noël.” French surely would be a satisfactory solution for all. It is the language of diplomacy.
WATERTOWN, N.Y. – The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job — outside of the church.
The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on Aug. 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.
The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
Today, August 15, is the Feast of the Assumption, the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the feast celebrates both the “happy departure of Mary from this life” and the “assumption of her body into heaven.” That she “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things” is a principle of Catholic dogma.
