Hey everyone, SexySecularist poster Mike has survived another year of life. In fact, he’s survived 21 years of life (and you know what that means). Wish the man a happy birthday!
Author Archive for Andrew
Mike’s recent post on sex education raised a few salient points that I’d like to expand upon….or should I say, sexpand upon.
No, I shouldn’t. Sorry about that sentence.
As far as I can tell from our discussions, the difference between myself and Mike on this issue is kind of at the heart of our political differences as well - he’s a tad closer to the libertarian side of things, whereas I’m a control freak and want the educational system to minimize the amount of stupidity I encounter on a daily basis.
So while we’re pretty much on the same side of the issue in terms of what ought to be taught in a sex education class (scientific facts, how things work, correct anatomy, nothing faith-based), our conflict seems to come in the area of whether it ought to be taught.
My first objection to the “this is an issue for the parents” argument is that many parents are ignorant, uncomfortable, ill-informed, or dishonest about the topic, and many simply don’t want to talk about it. Now, many states have an opt-out clause for sex education, and I guess that that can stay as a matter of principle. But the reason I want proper, detailed sex education in the schools is because sex is a big deal. It’s something most people (LARPers not included) deal with in their lives, and it holds enormous life-changing potential. Just as basics:
1) Birth. Sex is tied directly to state population, family size, distribution of resources, et cetera, et cetera. Proper sex education (which ought to touch on pre-natal care) would be tied to the health of children as well.
2) Public health. The best way to solve any epidemic is through preventative steps as policy, such as monitoring the food supply or requiring vaccines. So the best way to curb HIV and other illnesses is through a comprehensive sex education.
And these are just the official stated reasons. Mostly, I think the public k-12 education system ought to put more class time aside for education in the facts of life - how to write a resume, how to fill out a tax form, retirement plans, prenuptial agreements, child-rearing strategies, the maintenance of mental and physical health, how to avoid scams, et cetera. The secondary school which I attended offered a class called “Life Skills” which was pretty spotty in some areas but otherwise an excellent idea that was mostly helpful. We learned about IRAs, how a mortgage works, basics of taxes, addictions and health issues, ways of raising children (psychology isn’t exactly hard science, but it’s something), how to do a job interview. One of our history classes spent a good deal of time on detecting bias, which I think ought to be taught as well.
We’re best off with an educated public. If our kids are given available facts about life that can be empirically backed-up to some degree, they can use them without us worrying about having dictated by fiat how they ought to live their lives. Many of these are issues that we can’t trust to parents, because from the looks of things a great many parents don’t know all that much about finance, or health, or sex (aside from “nob A goes into hole - no, not that hole!”).
If somebody whines about the state not knowing how to raise children, I’m going to have to respond that I don’t fully trust people to raise their children - I’m quite honest about that. I’m also biased because I had relatively good teachers for a public school student (okay, our school was ranked in the top 100 of public schools, so I’m incredibly biased). Additionally, my girlfriend is a sex educator looking to go full-time, and more work for her equals more money for awesomeness.*
This is turning into a bit of a ramble, but the point is that I do think that the public ought to be informed about sex, and our education system is one of the best resources we have for at least a rudimentary presentation of the facts. Our population size, the amount of resources parents can provide for their children (based on whether they were able to plan their families), the spread of disease, and tolerance for people with different predilections can all be linked to a quality sex education.
As a final point, one concern I have for the future is that even when we abolish abstinence-only education, we will most likely still end up with an abstinence-biased education. My own school district provided plenty of information, but there was a serious leaning towards the “all STIs are horrible and scary, and if you give it up you give it away” school of thought. STIs ought to be taught like any other health issue - people need to know what’s going on, but if you use them as a scare tactic against premarital sex you’re just going to stigmatize them out of conversation. And the more you build up the myth of the “one special person,” the more emotional distress you’re going to risk having created. As far as I know, there is no epidemic of formerly “promiscuous” people (anyone who’s had casual sex, really) who are now completely unable to enjoy emotionally fulfilling sex; however there are plenty of young people who experience an awful lot of fear, guilt, and shame over their first time because they feel like they gave something up. Which of these seems to be caused by indoctrinated beliefs that have little factual basis? Just something to think about while we’re considering the issue of an education system that looks out for our health and well-being as well.
*I didn’t actually need to include that information; it’s just that when your sex toy purchases are tax-deductible, you tend to want to brag about it. Between the two of us, we can claim tax deductions for lube, rock concerts, theater tickets, dildos, CDs, buttplugs, cable television, pornography, and itunes purchases, all in the name of research for our jobs. (It seriously is research, but still, it’s pretty awesome.)
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, celebrating a stadium Mass for 45,000 people, acknowledged on Thursday that the U.S. pedophile priests scandal caused “indescribable pain and harm” to victims but asked Catholics to love their pastors.
[…]
“It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention,[…]” he said during Mass.
Um, Ratzi, I’m pretty sure that loving pastoral attention was the problem.
Senor Hitchens has already discussed Pope Ratzinger’s total failure to adequately deal with the sex scandal, as well as his continued sheltering of Cardinal Bernard Law.
The Catholic Church has failed so miserably in dealing with this enormous scandal - they continue harboring and protecting pedophilic priests and their accomplices, and have spent far too many of their resources saving face and casting blame rather than dealing with the problem. To date, they’ve reformed seminary training to prepare priests for a life of celibacy, they’ve issued an official document incorrectly (and disgustingly) linking sympathies to homosexuality with pedophilic tendencies…
I simply have trouble understanding how practicing Catholics can call themselves Catholics. Obviously American Catholics are picking and choosing from the dogma to strengthen their own values, and there’s the element of family and tradition - but I don’t see how Catholics can stick with the church after this. The church still officially shelters the protectors of child rapists, and blames atheism for the decay of society. Shame on them all. I simply don’t understand what the breaking point would be for a member of the Catholic Church. What would it take before they said “this has to change radically, or I’m out for good”? Why are concerned parents still paying to send their kids to faith schools? Why are they still tithing?
Where’s the red line that the church has to cross before you finally leave?
Alright, that’s it. These bastards have spammed me one too many times. Apparently they though I might be interested - well, read the comment yourself:
SCIENCE AND SCIENTIST - Inquiring into the Origin of Matter and Life | editors@scienceandscientist.org | scienceandscientist.org | IP: 192.100.2.12
We thought you might be interested –
SCIENCE AND SCIENTIST
Inquiring into the Origin of Matter and Life
January-March 2008Bhaktivedanata Institute’s latest quarterly newsletter
is now available online.You can download the January-March 2008 issue from:
http://scienceandscientist.org/current.php______________________________ ______________________________ __
What’s it about?
Modern science has generally been directed toward investigating
the material world, excluding consideration of the conscious
scientist who is essential to the whole process, since, of
course, the very existence of the scientific endeavor itself
depends upon consciousness. Complete scientific knowledge must
consequently include both objective science and subjective
consciousness.In addition to other programs, Bhaktivedanta Institute’s Science
and Scientist Newsletter is humbly offered to inspire scientists
and scholars to contribute their sincere efforts toward
developing this grand synthesis. The result will be valuable not
only for helping to better understand the “hard” problems of
science such as the nature and origin of life and the cosmos, the
mind-brain connection, artificial intelligence, etc. But the
pressing problems of ethics in science, world peace, and
interfaith dialog will also benefit from a more inclusive
scientific worldview.In our modern era science and religion are the predominating
influences determining the fate of mankind. Promoting and
developing a culture of harmony between such diverse fields has
the potential to expand our conception of reality and advance
human knowledge in the new millennium, in which it is said the
study of life will be pre-eminent. Let us welcome the dawn of
that new epoch with great hope and determined endeavor.
______________________________ ______________________________ __Newsletter Homepage: http://www.scienceandscientist.org
Newsletter Subscription:
http://www.scienceandscientist.org/subscribe.htmlPlease send comments/questions to:
editors@scienceandscientist.org
Wow, a synthesis between our greatest sources of knowledge, religion and science! Oh boy. A bit like saying that a collaboration between Elvis Costello and Olivia Newton-John brought together the two greatest minds in music, but I’ll go along with it for now. I went to their website and checked out their editorial board (since I imagine these folks have very high standards - possession of a Ph.D. must mean they’re right!). Editor-in-Chief Bhakti Madhava Puri Swami, Ph.D. is responsible for this bit of writing:
Reductionism means to attempt to explain all subjective experience and personality at the mechanical atomic level. This is the theory that life comes from matter by a process of gradual evolution over a long time span. Srila Prabhupada especially wanted to uproot this idea that life came from matter. He wanted to establish that life comes from life, and even that matter comes from life. I remember that it was a relief for us to realize that we were ultimately persons and God was ultimately personal. A personal Reality was a lot less difficult to conceive than an impersonal, materialistic one. I am a person. This is obvious. To conceive of ourselves as a combination of atoms and molecules is difficult. It is difficult to think of how a stone can give rise to a concept. But that mind or soul can contain “stone” as a concept within it is not so difficult.
This operates on so many levels of stupid that I wouldn’t even know where to begin; however, if keep on reading you’ll soon find yourself convinced of his argument. Working from a purely materialistic worldview, it is simply impossible to imagine that this much stupid can exist in one place without an essential source energy of stupid originating from beyond science’s reductionist explanations of matter. Teh stoopid just keeps going:
Vision is impossible to understand on the basis of mere mechanism. So naturally one has to inquire about the existence of another principle besides matter to explain some simple observations such as visual illusions like the Nekker cube, for example. Here we look at one object but “see” it in different ways — as a flat figure of intersecting lines, as a three dimensional cube facing left or facing right. Such a variety of perspectives of a single object by a particular eye is the effect of a meta level of reality operating outside the physical level of the eye.
and going
Srila Prabhupada explained that we daily observe that life comes from life. A dog comes from a dog. A human being comes from a human being. Everywhere we look we see that life comes from life. Therefore why should we conclude that life comes from matter? Science means observe and then draw some conclusion based on those observations. We observe that life comes from life, but has anyone ever observed life coming from chemicals? No. Then how can this idea be scientific? Observation or experiment does not support the theory that life comes from matter.
and going
The US landed a man on the Moon in July 1969. Srila Prabhupada insisted that they did not go to the Moon. We all thought this meant that the US was involved in some type of conspiracy to fool the public. Later as it became clear to us that they had actually gone to the Moon. Srila Prabhupada explained that they had not really gone because they could not enter the atmosphere of the Moon, they had to take their own atmosphere with them. Also they could not see the presiding deity of the Moon, and they could not stay there. Therefore they did not go to this higher planet in truth. At that time we realized that our way of seeing in physical terms was different from the way Srila Prabhupada was seeing things from the perspective of the conscious world.
There is simply so much stupid here, I feel like contradicting their assertions would be fruitless. I look at a vast sea of idiotic, religious, pseudo-scientific, patently false idiocy and feel completely powerless. I am a man lost in the ocean, a lone ant charged with climbing Mount Everest. But I encourage you to read. If you derive any pleasure whatsoever from massive piles of stupid, you must tread on.
And please remember: I come from California. Members of my family actually read this shit, nod, and say “that’s so deep!” I have to see these people’s supporters at family gatherings. So, please send some sort of cash if you could - I could use the therapy.
—————–
EDIT
and going:
It is not just a matter of measuring some features and putting down some results, they plug those features into an equation. Where do they get that equation from? – From their theories. Where do they get their theories from? – Some body made a guess: it might be like this and it might be like that. From that guess they wrote the theory and then the equation and they see if that confirms to that. They had a nice theory. They put a nice theory together – the explosion theory or the Big Bang theory. They calculated from that so many different things. Now they find that universe doesn’t have enough matter to let their equations work. Their theory doesn’t work. Rather than change the theory they want to change the universe. They say that, “The universe is not right. Our theory is right but universe is not correct. So let us correct the universe.” This is the philosophy of scientists.
It’s only 1:16 in the afternoon, and i already need a drink.
One of the things that I have to contend with, being a strident and ardent atheist, is that a certain amount of dissonance will always exist between the views I hold regarding religion. As SexySecularist Mike and I were discussing earlier, the positions of fundamentalists frequently make more sense (in their bizarro world way) than those of religious moderates. The fundamentalist says, “The Bible is true, anything the contradicts it is false,” while the moderate will hold that Genesis is kind of true…and evolution is also true too. Or religious moderates will take it a step further, and assert that the Bible is not meant to be taken literally - in spite of the fact that the Bible has spent the better part of a few thousand years firmly in the “nonfiction” category, and says within its pages that it is the absolute unerring truth. As Sam Harris argues, the more intolerant and wacky religious claims often have greater internal consistency than the seemingly more reasonable arguments of religious moderates and liberals.
And yet. Our greatest allies are going to be the religious moderates and reformers, and there’s little getting around that. Whenever I hear “The Bible teaches love and tolerance!” followed by advocacy of gay rights or religious tolerance and further criticisms of fundamentalism, my first instinct isn’t delight at having found common ground, but rather an immediate revulsion to this ignorance of the actual content of the Bible. When I hear someone excuse the testaments by claiming that they’re not meant to be taken literally, I can’t help but think that they’re just being dishonest or ignorant by selectively ignoring the parts of the Bible that state quite clearly that the Bible is the absolutel literal truth.
Even though these are usually very good, smart people who are committed to good works and the betterment of society, I remain appalled that they will attribute their morality to a book that is very near the opposite of good, and I fear that giving a show of respect to their claims about God and the Bible simply lubricates the slippery slope of religious excuses. I also fear that when we don’t expose religious texts and doctrines as fundamentally and historically unethical or untrue, we give up a certain amount of ground to factions that desire a more tolerant society, and who will possibly sacrifice our own freedoms in order to foster that tolerance (see: Europe’s dealings with Islam).
It seems to me that the part of me that respects truth and consistency will forever be at odds with the part of me that respects a better society and cooperation towards a greater goal. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Look to your right - there’s a new poll up to keep you busy while we author some new posts.
Nearly 2,000 spam comments and a front page filled with old posts. I’ve come back to the blog after a prolonged vacation and there are cobwebs EVERYWHERE, old newspapers stacked up outside the door, and a family of cats living in the walls.
I’ve got to do some housecleaning around here, but we’ll be back up and hosting elegant soirees in no time.
A young Christian (poorly) designed a science experiment with the intention of measuring the morality of Christians and non-Christians. This included a delightful questionaire evaluating our morals. Hey, ho, let’s go!
As some of you may have noticed, SexySecularist doesn’t seem to have the wealth of essays and opinions that it used to, and the updates seem to be further and further apart.
I’m a studio composition major, which is a fancy way of saying that I’m somewhere in between songwriting/composition and studio production, and these past few months all my atheist energy has been focused on writing horribly offensive songs. Eventually I’ll post them here, but first I need a recording, and to get a recording I need a band, and to get a band I need to find a guitarist who doesn’t turn up his gain to “11″ the moment the drummer walks into the room. It’s all coming together and I’ll have something within the next two months, but in the meanwhile, I ask that everybody be patient and continue to check in once a week or so for periodic updates. We’ll still be posting, but until these tracks get cut I can’t make too many promises.
While we’re waiting, I’d post a work tape of my martyr song, “Londonistan Calling,” but I’m the type of perfectionist who can either post a finished product or a total piece of crap (and nothing in between), so instead, here’s a sample of what happens when my drummer says, “let’s write a scream metal song” at the end of a jam session.
Satanic Samba (Lyrics will eventually take the place of the gibberish syllables…one hopes.)
I am so sorry.
I just returned to my dorm to discover that during the winter break, one of my roommates drank the seven beers I had in storage.
It’s true: There is no God.
From BBC News:
Pope Benedict XVI has cancelled a visit to a prestigious university in Rome where lecturers and students have protested against his views on Galileo.
[…]
Pope Benedict was in charge of Roman Catholic doctrine in 1990 when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he commented on the 17th-Century Galileo trial.
In the speech, he quoted Austrian-born philosopher Paul Feyerabend as saying the Church’s verdict against Galileo had been “rational and just”.
[…]
“In the name of the secular nature of science we hope this incongruous event can be cancelled,” said the letter addressed to the university’s rector, Renato Guarini.
The scholars also held a protest lunch with a great banner slogan: “Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests”.
Let’s wait for the Catholic Church to do something ironic.
Vatican Radio said the protest at La Sapienza had “a censorious tone”.
Zing!
I’m on vacation and the blogging is getting sparse, so for the next week or so I will be re-posting the best posts from the first months of Sexy Secularist to keep the troops of militant atheists entertained.
In my own life and as regards my own beliefs, I have the same accusations leveled against me time and again, and they all boil down to this: “All mind, no heart.” A friend who’s very nearly on the verge of becoming a former friend recently characterized me as small-minded, and frequently remarks that my beliefs are lacking in compassion and imagination and couched in cold intellectualism.
Most of my life, I’ve tried to believe in God. Atheism can be very lonely; religious holidays and the cornerstones of religious belief are ubiquitous, while God is present in our stories, our songs, our pledge of allegiance, legal oaths; He’s even on our money! Most of my friends’ families said Grace at the dinner table. Being Jewish is already bad enough—the holidays suck, the food is heavy, the music is pretty awful—but to be a culturally Jewish atheist? Every time I ate dinner at a friend’s house, I felt left out. Frequently I was asked to say Grace, whether they knew my religious beliefs or not, and I was put in a position to either be dishonest to myself or disrespectful to the hosts (never mind how rude it is to ask a seven-year-old kid to say Grace when you know that his parents don’t believe in God).
The common storyline in popular culture on the topic is that of the loveless skeptic: An arrogant intellectual who’s big on facts and low on compassion who spends so much time proving things false that he can’t accept what’s true, until some great miracle, act of kindness, or personal tragedy suddenly opens his heart to God. I grew up identifying with these anti-heroes: my soul cold and hollow, my heart in need of softening, and my mind holding the doors of faith firmly shut.
I tried as best I could to believe and fit in. I was the most accomplished student in Hebrew school, able to recite the most prayers, able to translate the most Hebrew, and able to comprehend the most Jewish law. I knew the Christmas stories and songs better than the Christians did. Heck, I attended adult Bible study regularly. For years I prayed to God, sometimes nightly. I thought that if I just tried hard enough, I could find faith. Clap harder and harder and suddenly I’d believe in fairies.
Pharyngula is hosting a contest to win a copy of Atlas of Creation.
Would you believe someone has received a copy of Harun Yahya’s epic tome, Atlas of Creation, and doesn’t want it? Weird, huh?
Let’s imagine, though, that someone for some bizarre reason wants one. Here’s your chance: write a comment here that testifies to your deep and unholy desire to possess a copy, and the current possessor of a copy will judge them and decide to whom he will impart this strange book of lunacy.
Yours truly could not resist such an opportunity.
Comment #249
I am male,Encuentra un casinos en linea que te ofrezca adem?s de las mejores ganancias un buen esquema que te permita salvar lo que has ganado de la forma m?s eficiente. so pleasuring myself is naturally a bit messy. I’m squeamish about using socks (in case I run out of clean pairs before laundry day), and my ejaculate is unusually runny, meaning that is frequently soaks through tissues, paper towel, and scrap paper - this does not bode well for the carpeting in my apartment. I am desperately in need of glossy, non-absorbent paper onto which I can spill my seed before folding said paper and disposing of it.
I’ll need at least enough to last me roughly three weeks, so roughly 800 pages will be required.
Fingers crossed, everybody.
———————————————
EDIT: Well, now I notice that I used the word “roughly” twice in the same sentence. Goodbye, dreams.
I went to a student concert on campus last night. The musicians were good (one rapper in particular pretty much blew us all away), but it was really all worth it for two reasons:
In Our Hearts is action-oriented; its purpose is not to exist as an organization but to facilitate the interaction of collectives, affinity groups and projects involved with the network, helping to coordinate actions and projects on a larger scale as well as creating space for social interaction and face to face conversation.
The first time I saw anything on the flyer that actually meant something was halfway through the second paragraph, when they mentioned a “monthly potluck.”
Ah, liberals.
I’ve been meaning ever since last Thursday to blog about this, but only now have I had pressing concerns that have spurred me to once again procrastinate away by blogging.
The degree to which I despise Judaism can be traced back to such items as the Rabbi’s yearly speeches against intermarriage, Hasidic employers (hey, a check’s a check) who would tell me that “a Jewish soul is richer than a goyishe soul,” and hearing my grandmother say about a non-Jew I was dating, “Well, you can fuck her all you like, but just don’t marry her.”
Thanksgiving with my family is always quite the experience. My grandparents have somehow morphed into single-issue voters (”Israel! Israel! Israel!”), which took these former lefties so far to the right that one would today be shocked to discover that my grandmother was once a victim of the McCarthy blacklists way back in the day. My single-issue right-wing (but otherwise lefty) grandparents make a perfect match for my sister, who is a scholar of foreign policy and is working with the Barack Obama campaign. Plus we have my pro-Palestinian, knee-jerk anti-Imperialist uncle, my appease-arguing-parties-at-any-cost mother, and me and my brother playing the role of Lenny Bruce at the country club.
Oh, yeah. And then there’s my mom’s boyfriend’s family of lapsed Catholics and born-again Christians. He would be a husband instead of boyfriend, but my maternal grandparents object to “Jewish assimilation” and are in a position to give out much-needed financial assistance, so my mother is in a non-marriage that’s been going on nearly a decade. Yay religion and finance!
In any case, my mom’s boyfriend’s brother just recently got off of a longstanding drug addiction, and has become a born-again Christian. We have a yearly tradition of each person at the table enumerating a few of the things for which they are thankful, and so it was only natural that he thank “Jesus, for saving me, for his infinite love, for making my life better.” (I did my best to keep a straight face because, much as I hate religion and the way they recruit vulnerable people (prisoners, addicts, people from Tacoma) I’d rather see him off of meth than on it.)
All went fine and it was a very nice Thanksgiving by all accounts. Stuffing was delicious, Karaoke was enjoyable, and the kosher turkey was a rip-off (it came half-frozen, double-priced, and still with a few feathers in it - my grandfather, who teaches Bar Mitzvah and is Ritual Director for a local synagogue, announced that we had been “Jewed out of our money”).
Things all seemed well - that is until the day after, when over lunch my Grandmother took the time to rail against D.’s having thanked Jesus Christ “in a Jewish home.” After all, couldn’t he have just thanked God and not risked offending us?
Well, no, because according to his (wacky-tacky) beliefs, it was specifically Jesus who saved him by self-sacrificing on the cross, not God. But that’s not the issue here.
The important question is - what the hell does she care? She kept asserting that the home was a “Jewish home,” and I had to repeatedly point out that the two homeowners - my mother and her boyfriend - are, respectively, a (culturally Jewish) new-age atheist, and a lapsed Catholic. But, again - who the hell cares who a guest thanks at the table? As I said to my grandmother, “How dare he thank his imaginary friend instead of your imaginary friend!”
I get a bit tired of hearing about intolerant atheists who won’t let other people be, because the truth is, in all these little moments, we tend not to give a crap. In all of the serious religious disputes our family has gone through, the atheists have never been the cause. My mom’s boyfriend hasn’t made a stink about his daughter having to go to Bible study classes, but his daughter has been raised to think that he’s living in sin and that he’s going to Hell. My mom never made a stink about Judaism, but my grandparents have been content to use financial pressures to make sure she never marries outside of the faith, and to ensure that her children get a thorough education in Jewish history (e.g., thirty hours or so of films about the holocaust, countless productions of Fiddler on the Roof, and one torturous screening of Yentl).
The attack on religion in the public sphere is most certainly handled quite well by atheists. But attacks on religion in the private sphere — between individuals — seem to come, more often than not, from the religious.
While we’re at it, the Jewish opposition to assimilation disgusts me. It is probably one of the most crucial reasons why - no matter how culturally Jewish I may be, and no matter how much Judaism has figured into my life - I refuse to identify myself as a Jew. And I was raised in a liberal Jewish community. Makes you wonder how disgusting and bigoted Orthodox and Hasidic Jews might be.
But more on that - including the time I caught a Hasidic Rabbi looking at porn, and the time my Dad was accused of being an anti-semite for taking the correct side in a zoning dispute - later.
I really can’t even comment on most of this, except to say that some of these quotes are comedy gold.
Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”
Get this: They were marching in a place called - I am not making this up - Martyrs Square.
“Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion,” the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers.
“This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad,” he said.
The good news is that prominent Western Muslims are denouncing their Sudanese brethren. Let’s hope this trend of intolerance toward stupidity can continue.
Sometimes I have to wonder if The Onion runs the Muslim world, I really do.
Richard Roberts told students at Oral Roberts University Wednesday that he did not want to resign as president of the scandal-plagued evangelical school, but that he did so because God insisted.God told him on Thanksgiving that he should resign the next day, Roberts told students in the university’s chapel.
“Every ounce of my flesh said ‘no’” to the idea, Roberts said, but he prayed over the decision with his wife and his father, Oral Roberts, and decided to step down.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Roberts spoke for only a few minutes and was applauded and cheered by students. He wiped away tears with a white handkerchief and his hands.
“This has nearly destroyed my family, and it’s nearly destroyed ORU,” Roberts said.
A lawsuit accuses Roberts of lavish spending at a time when the university faced more than $50 million in debt, including taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel to the Bahamas aboard the university jet.
Roberts has previously said that God told him to deny the allegations.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ. His sheep don’t see through this? A first-year acting class could tell you that he’s a lying sack of shit.
Full story at http://www.thebostonchannel.com/education/14719097/detail.html.
Last night I sang praise songs in a gospel choir.
More on that later.
Twas the month before Christmas, when - hey, what the heck?
Up go lights, decorations - all the holiday dreck!
Just this Thursday, we ate and we offered our thanks,
As next Christmas rolled in like an army of tanks.
All the stores are bedecked, all the streets are bedazzled,
And these holiday songs leave a man well-near frazzled.
What’s an atheist to do at the end of November?
How to kindle his hearth with a warm, godless ember?
Never fear, herded cats! Pour yourselves some eggnog,
Gather round for a godless, great carnival blog.
If I could have a brain-crush on any blogger, it would have to be ERV. Firstly, because graduate biochemists are sexy. Secondly, because she has no conscience or shame in ridiculing stupid people. Thirdly, because she doesn’t take shit from chauvinists.
Now I find out, via her blog, that she is a total hottie. Be still, my beating heart. Be still.
If you haven’t been following the writer’s strike, you really ought to.
[Links and info courtesy of Mark, who’s been blogging about this (and embedding hilarious videos from TV writers) since it started.]
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