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Category: religion (page 21 of 36)

How to make your own shroud

6 October 2009 / / 4 Comments

From the Department of Ersatz Relics, a new development:

The Shroud of Turin has been reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth bearing an image of Christ’s face is a fake.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia said he had used materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages.

These included applying pigment to cloth and then heating it in an oven.

Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to between 1260 and 1390, but believers say it is an authentic image of Christ.

This reminds me of 1991, when two men revealed that they were responsible for making all those crop circles. If anyone doubted them, they went ahead and demonstrated how they’d done it, using ropes and boards. By showing how they could have faked the crop circles, they essentially discredited the alien hypothesis in the minds of most people. Occam’s Razor and all that.

If anyone still believes that the shroud is authentic, I suppose this won’t convince them. But now it’s been shown that it dates to no earlier than medieval times, and could have been made with the technology of that time. Occam’s Razor suggests that this is the most likely scenario.

h/t to Jessica

Tesco doesn’t like cosplay

20 September 2009 / / 4 Comments

If you’re a member of the Jedi religion (and no, I’m not talking about you poseurs who just said ‘Jedi’ on the census), you must have picked up on this newsy item:

Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.

Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.

The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules.

I am slowly becoming persuaded that Jedi-ism (or is that Jediïsm?) is slightly less of a parody than Pastafarianism. I’m no fan of people claiming victimisation when people try to stop their religious practices. But fair’s fair — if some Muslims get to cover up in a burqa at the store, the Jedi’s should get to wear the hood. The Jedi religion is just as valid, and to its credit it probably doesn’t try to kill its apostates.

Tesco thinks it’s done its homework.

But the grocery empire struck back, claiming that the three best known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods. Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain.

Silly supermarket! Everyone knows that religions evolve away from their origins in arbitrary ways for their own convenience.

When a loved one can’t accept your non-acceptance of god

7 September 2009 / / 8 Comments

It’s not often that I bother with proto-arch-evangelist Billy Graham, but on this particular Sunday his article seemed appropriate:

What to Do When a Loved One Rejects God

The correct answer is, of course, to congratulate them on their clear-headed reasoning skills, and offer support for the sometimes tough deconversion process that follows. And thank Zeus that they’ll no longer be trying to evangelise you, with that hopeful but concerned expression that loved ones often wear when they consider the state of your hypothetical soul.

But that’s not Billy’s answer.

Q: Our college-age son says he doesn’t believe in God anymore. We talk about it some (mainly when we’re trying to get him to go to church), but we always end up arguing. How can we convince him that he’s wrong? – Mrs. A. McC.

Gotta love those assumptions. I suppose a bit of evidence is out of the question.

A: In all honesty, you probably can’t convince your son that he’s wrong right now – because he’s probably not willing to admit that he might be. Hopefully, some day, he will be open to changing his beliefs – but right now, he isn’t.

Well, not willing to admit you might be wrong isn’t a good thing, that’s true. This ad appeared on the same web page, which gives you some idea as to how eager these folks are to allow that their beliefs could be mistaken.


I’d like to pose the question from the opposite perspective: what to do when a loved one accepts God, but won’t leave you alone about it? In which case, my answer would match Mr Graham’s answer to the letter.

I don’t mind if my family stays religious. I’m certainly not trying to deconvert anyone — I’m happy for them to do as they please. (If someone finds themselves not believing any more, but they don’t know what to do about it, that’s another story.) I don’t even mind if people in my family (or anyone else) want to talk about religion to me; it’s actually one of my favourite topics. I wish they’d bring it up more! Just as long as they know that when they do, they know they can expect a factual and straightforward response.

I’ve just received a message from a loved one who I’ve known for years, who’s still in the LDS Church. Here’s an excerpt, emphasis in original:

I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church.

No, you’re merely certain.

I also know that you and Miss Perfect love one another and would want to be married and sealed for all eternity.

That would be lovely, if eternity were on offer. I wonder if anyone else can offer eternity on slightly better terms, perhaps without threatening me with eternal consequences if I don’t obey commandments involving (say) giving them lots of time and money.

In order to do this you need to come back into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Sounds simple. So what’s the problem? Equally simple. The LDS Church is untrue — a fact which every non-Mormon already knows. Like all religions, it teaches untrue things. All I ask is that a religion live up to its own hype, and this one doesn’t.

To put a finer point on it, the doctrines of the LDS Church (and every religion I’ve ever run across, which are myriad) fall into exactly three categories:

  1. Teachings that are unconfirmed by evidence, like the existence of supernatural beings, an afterlife, and so on
  2. Teachings that have been refuted by evidence, e.g. ancient Americans are Hebrews who spoke a form of Egyptian, rode horses, and smelted steel
  3. Teachings that are more or less true, but which were already known by people without any revelation being necessary. For example, Mormons are fond of claiming that the Word of Wisdom is revolutionary, especially about smoking. But the anti-tobacco movement was getting started around the 1830’s, about the same time as the temperance movement, and could have been familiar to people in that area.

(Naturally, if anyone thinks I’m wrong, and knows of a religion with doctrines that do not fit into these three categories, please mention them in comments.)

It’s especially hard for family members to deal with your deconversion. Spouses, parents, siblings — they all want you to be happy, and they’ve been told you can’t be if you’re outside the religion. My old religion pretended to be able to keep families together after death, dependent on you staying in the system. Which basically means that you’re threatened with eternal isolation if you leave. This is a despicable tactic for religions to use. If I were feeling nasty, I might call it emotional hostage-taking. It makes it impossible for family members to have emotional boundaries — they think your choices will affect them for eternity.

So it’s hard for me to feel upset with caring people who try to evangelise me. I’m just glad that, as someone who accepts rationality, I’m no longer prone to the kind of worry that they feel.

It’s all the same racket.

17 August 2009 / / 1 Comment

There’s a gypsy guy who wants to work as a fortune-teller, but can’t because it’s against the law.

He has enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union in his year-long fight to overturn the law that calls his livelihood fraudulent. He argues that fortunetelling is part of his heritage and that prohibiting him from working as a fortuneteller amounts to discrimination.

Is this some religious blue law? Nope — it’s actually quite sensible.

“I don’t think it’s strange for us to have laws that protect against fraud,” said Clifford Royalty, zoning division chief in the Montgomery County attorney’s office, adding that “religion has nothing to do with it. He’s not made that allegation in the lawsuit.”

“The practice is fraudulent,” Royalty said, “because no one can forecast the future.”

Through non-empirical means, that’s right.

So if it’s illegal to make fraudulent claims about the future in Montgomery County, are there no churches as well? Because their claims about the future are far more overblown.

UPDATE: Miss Perfect snipes: “I bet there’s a chiropractor next door.”

How to persuade? And who?

16 August 2009 / / 1 Comment

I ran across two similar articles the other day. One’s about religion, one’s about politics, and both are taking me to task.

Must science declare a holy war on religion?

The so-called New Atheists are attacking the mantra of science and faith being compatible. Others in the science community question the value of confrontation.

Ooo, confrontation. Sounds confronting. It seems that atheist scientists are being mean, publishing books, and loudly declaring that God probably doesn’t exist. Doing science, in other words.

And then there’s this article:

Are liberals seceding from sanity?

The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group

which takes liberals to task for South-bashing, and the only example offered is Kevin Drum. But never mind. The article warns us:

They are erring neighbors to be won over, not cretins to be mocked.

At which point I ask: Is it too much to ask for both?

Let’s examine the question that ties these two articles together: how do we act toward people who disagree with us? And there are at least two possible answers:

  1. Be nice, keep quiet, persuade them with reason, and sooner or later they’ll come around if we don’t hurt their feelings and (all together now) alienate them.
  2. Be loud and proud, combat the ridiculous with ridicule, the error with truth, and don’t worry overmuch about stepping on toes.

Now let’s see: where have I heard this conflict before? Ah, yes. It was Amy Sullivan, who warned us that Democrats needed people of faith to win elections. She couldn’t have known how badly that would work for Republicans, who herded the faithful into their tent, only to find that they couldn’t get rid of them. Now the delusional folk are wanting to run the whole show, with predictably disastrous consequences.

So let’s address the religion article first. And just for perspective: these articles ran on the same day as these news stories:

Dozens of rabbis fly over Israel praying to defeat swine flu

The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

“We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” added Batzri.

Mayoral Candidate Mary Falling Wants Creationism Exhibit

TULSA, OK — A mayoral candidate has resurrected a controversy over Creationism at the Tulsa Zoo.

A push to exhibit the Christian story of creation at the Tulsa Zoo failed four years ago. Republican candidate for Tulsa mayor, Anna Falling, is bringing the issue front and center.

It’s the same exhibit and the same arguments, but now it is given from the bully pulpit of a candidate running for mayor.

“Some may ask why this issue during a Mayoral campaign? And I say why not?” said candidate Anna Falling.

For Anna Falling, the road to city hall runs through the Tulsa Zoo. She’s made her Christianity central to her platform and now the exhibit depicting the Christian story of Creationism is her first campaign promise.

“Today we are announcing that God will be glorified in this city. He shall not be shunned. Upon our election, we hereby commit to honoring Him in all ways that He has been dishonored,” said Anna Falling.

These people live in the same century as we do. They have access to all the same knowledge that we do. The Enlightenment was 400 years ago. Sweet reason has had all that time to do its work. The non-confrontational approach has failed. They’re still here, dumber than ever, and trying to take over the world that science has created. By not confronting them, by not speaking out, we will let them win.

On the other hand, by speaking out, by coming out and being heard, by being loud and obnoxious and, yes, confrontational, we have seen our numbers grow. More people now identify as non-religious than at any time in recent history.

If my reading is representative, most of these gains are coming from people who haven’t been religious for a long time, but were reluctant to call themselves atheists or agnostics. For these people, all the noise about religion has forced the issue, and pushed them to re-examine their beliefs. It may have pushed some other people the other way, this is true, but those people probably weren’t convincible anyway. The only people I see complaining about noisy atheists are Fundamentalist Christians — and why wouldn’t they.

See, when you’re in a religion, it’s like you’re in a bubble. A big cushy bubble where it’s nice and soft, and everyone reaffirms your beliefs. And it feels goood. Now someone comes and gives your bubble a push. You have two choices. If you’re a confirmed believer, you retreat further into the bubble. That makes the noise stop. Drat those noisy people! Why must they challenge you? It certainly didn’t make you change, but then what were the odds of that happening? On the other hand, if you’re someone who makes reality your guide, that noise (plus the cognitive dissonance you already have floating around in there) may be just the thing that forces you to see how the facts conflict with what’s going on in your bubble. And when that gets loud enough, you might decide to burst your bubble and change your thinking.

But that only works when it’s obvious that there’s a disconnect between your bubble and the real world. So I’d say that when you have the facts on your side, your cause can only benefit from pushing the facts.

Now what about the South-bashing? This is trickier because while the US South has a definite inclination toward the most dangerous kind of lunacy, I’ve read comments from loads of people in the South who are progressive, and who feel annoyed and embarrassed by the attitudes of their neighbours. So I don’t engage in South-bashing. I’m not a big fan of stereotyping. Not very accurate. But I’ll gladly take on the lunacy. People who are convincible aren’t too crazy about the crazy anyway.

And this is what I think both authors miss: people are different. That is, some people are crazy, and some people are convincible, and they are not the same people.

You can take on the crazy with mockery and ridicule. They won’t like it. But the convincible will notice that you’re making sense. They’ll thank you for it. And all you have to do is tell the truth and tell it loud.

Mormons v JW’s: Thinking of the children

11 August 2009 / / 5 Comments

Now that I have a bit of time to relax, I’m going through that Pew Report again. One thing that really stood out for me is how closely Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses show the same kinds of attitudes. They both take the Bible literally, they’re just as likely to attend weekly services, they don’t like evolution or gay people, and they both feel irrationally threatened by ‘Hollywood’.

But one difference is striking: Mormons are retaining their young people, while Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t.

Mormons have a relatively high retention rate of childhood members compared with other major religious traditions. Seven-in-ten of those raised Mormon (70%) still identify as Mormon, a figure roughly comparable to that seen among those raised Catholic (68% are still Catholic) but somewhat lower than among those raised Protestant (80% are still Protestant and 52% are still in the same Protestant family). Jehovah’s Witnesses, by contrast, have a relatively low retention rate (only 37% are still Jehovah’s Witnesses).

That’s really low for the Witnesses, especially when you consider how important kids are for the growth of the movement. (Just look at the Shakers. If you can find them, that is.)

So why is there such a difference between Mormons and JW’s on this score? It can’t be because LDS youth just love church so much. Religion’s kind of a boring and depressing pain in the ass either way.

Is it the door-to-door stuff? Tracting was bad enough as a 20-year-old; it would have been infinitely worse as a teenager in my own town. With my parents.

But I don’t know if that’s it. Someone help me out here.

Mom and Dad pray while sick daughter dies

3 August 2009 / / 3 Comments

Here’s another guy who really believes in his religion. In this case, that means someone ended up dead.

A US jury has found a man guilty of killing his sick 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.

The man, Dale Neumann, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.

She died of a treatable disease – undiagnosed diabetes – at home in rural Wisconsin in March last year, as people surrounded her and prayed.

Neumann’s wife, Leilani Neumann, was convicted earlier this year.

The couple, who were both convicted of second-degree reckless homicide, face up to 25 years in prison when they are sentenced in October.

Reckless homicide is a good way of putting it. Having a child means you have to take care of them. They can’t do it themselves; they count on you. When you instead subject that child to a horrible and unnecessary death, there ought to be legal consequences.

And that goes for people who use alternative medicine instead of giving their child real medicine. If that child is harmed through a parent’s inaction, there should be consequences.

Mormons the most Republican religious group

27 July 2009 / / 1 Comment

In a piece of news that surprised precisely no one, the Pew Report has revealed that Mormons are the most conservative religious group in America.

More Mormons (60 percent) identify themselves as conservatives than any other religious group; they also lead every other group in GOP party identification (at 65 percent)–much higher than the general population in both categories.

Actually, I was a bit surprised. Only 65 percent Republican? Back in my Utah days, it felt like 95 percent. I’ll bet the Republican numbers are low because there’s a further 25 percent comprised of John-Birch-birther-Ron-Paul Independents who think the Republican party isn’t Constitutional enough.

Out of the remaining 10 percent, subtract the usual 8 percent Unaffiliated/Don’t Know, and you’ll have 2 percent left. That’s the elusive Liberal Mormon.

You’ll find more than a few liberal Mormons behind this effort to reconcile LDS Church leadership with gay people. As of today, it has — wow — all of 1,360 signatories. (For comparison, this is an order of magnitude less than this petition to consider Michael Jackson for a Nobel Peace Prize.)

We the undersigned, in the spirit of love and peace, earnestly seek to create a climate for reconciliation between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gays and lesbians who have been affected by the policies, practices and politics of the Church. We recognize that issues surrounding sexuality and gender orientation are complex; that understanding of these matters has evolved, especially over the past several decades, and are continuing to evolve as scientists, therapists, theologians and others continue to explore and ponder their meaning and significance; We believe that people of good will may have differing views about homosexuality, while maintaining amicable relationships.

Lovely sentiments, a noble goal, and a complete waste of time. Why would church leadership want to reconcile with gay people? Their fiercely conservative membership is convinced they speak for god, and when god’s on your side, negotiation is impossible. Enter a dialogue with gay people, seriously? Those people want to destroy society. Oh, sure, the church will have to walk back all that homophobia someday, but that’ll be a long time from now, and Mormons will claim it was never official church policy anyway.

You have to love Mormon liberals, but you have to feel sad for them. True, they haven’t completely off-loaded their conscience onto church leadership. But that only means that their post-Dark-Ages political leanings puts them at odds with other Mormons, including church leaders, who wonder why they’re not ‘following the prophet’. So they have an uneasy relationship with a church that distrusts them for their intellectual independence.

I want to see a better relationship between the LDS Church and gay people too, but it’s not going to happen by church members politely petitioning for it. It will happen when Mormons with a conscience refuse to support the church financially or numerically with their membership.

Why sue a genie? He’ll just conjure up a really good lawyer.

15 July 2009 / / 5 Comments

Back in my Mormon days, I believed in angels. By that I mean, I believed the stories about angels visiting Joseph Smith, and I agreed that angels could probably exist in theory somewhere. If someone claimed they’d actually seen an angel, I’d have been extremely skeptical. But they were characters in scripture, which I believed, so how skeptical could I have been.

But I never believed in genies — that was just storybook stuff. (At the time I saw no contradiction.)

Imagine my surprise to find genies treated as real beings in the Qu’ran. And now it would appear that someone is trying to sue one.

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

Cell phones. Voice mail. I’m tempted to say that these people don’t deserve the technology that they have. And the same goes for some Christians — today I saw someone smear a woman with cooking oil in an attempt to convince a supernatural being to heal her. That these people can even use a phone is amazing to me.

Pre-deconversion, I’d have thought that suing an angel was crazy, so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some Muslims think that suing a genie is equally crazy. Then again, if you think that angels and genies are real beings, it makes perfect sense to sue them like anyone else. This family’s unquestioning faith in their scriptures looks like insanity. Doesn’t it?

So here’s an interesting continuum. On the one side are people who are rational, don’t believe in supernatural beings, and live in the real world. On the other side, you have people who believe in angels and genies, and may try to sue them. They’re the ones who really believe their religion, but they’re (quite frankly) nuts. Someone in the middle of the continuum, like me back then, claims to believe in those things, but doesn’t really. These people can exist in the real world, but that means they believe in their religion somewhat less. This suggests that one is insane to the extent that they believe in the unreal beings presupposed by their religion.

Civil disobedience of the nicest sort

12 July 2009 / / 3 Comments

A lovely bit of protest over in Salt Lake City. Two guys get charged with trespassing for a peck on the cheek in Temple Square. Next thing you know…

About 100 people gathered near the Mormon church’s downtown temple to stage a “kiss-in” protesting the treatment of 2 gay men who were detained by security guards on a plaza owned by the church and later cited by police for trespassing.
…
The Salt Lake Tribune reported on its Web site that heterosexual and gay couples exchanged small kisses and pecks at the plaza’s south entrance, which faces downtown. Church security was present, but the Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported on its Web site that no altercations occurred.

This takes non-violent protest to a new level — it’s anti-violent.

It’s entirely fitting that this protest is happening in Salt Lake City. The search term “men kissing” is most googled in Utah, with SLC also showing a lot of curiosity. Now they get to see some for real.

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