Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
I have great news, folks. Christians don’t kill people in the name of their religion. They don’t, and they haven’t. Maybe ever. Certainly not recently. Hindus are in the clear, too: there have been zero instances of Hindus killing people in the name of Hinduism. Likewise for Buddhists, and Jews, and, well, everyone. There have been zero instances of religious killings from practitioners of any religion… except Islam. At least, that is, according to Fox News’ Eric Bolling, who shared this beautiful revelation on Saturday while discussing President Obama’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast. The particular comments that provoked this informative segment were Obama’s remarks about Christianity’s own history with violence: And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. Read more
Last month, an op-ed about secular parenting by Phil Zuckerman, author and Pitzer College professor of Sociology and Secular Studies, was published in the LA Times. In the piece, Zuckerman discusses his own and other researchers’ work, in measuring the success, or lack thereof, of raising kids to be “good without God.” And the results seem to indicate the secular community is doing as good a job, and in some measures possibly a better job, than their peers. Read more
Kevin Kukla at prolife365.com has a very important message for women: if your boyfriend watches porn, he’s “addicted” and you should dump him as soon as possible. Now this might seem like just another odious facet of fundamentalist Christianity’s repressive views on sexuality, but Kukla’s reasons are so compelling that he’s bound to sway people. Read more
You probably have a pretty good idea already, but if you ever find yourself wondering exactly how women’s ideas fared in the Bible, a recent project by an Episcopal priest, Reverend Lindsay Hardin Freeman and three other women in her church community, might give you an inkling. Freeman and her group pored through the text to find all the women in the Bible, and what they said. Read more
Christian opponents of marriage equality have finally hit upon the one argument that might derail the whole process: not every kid of gay parents is happy with their parents’ job of raising them. I know. It’s powerful stuff. Think Progress’ Zack Ford has an article up about this so-called “Quartet of Truth” — a group of adults who were raised by gay parents and are now very opposed to gay marriage. The Quartet had filed briefs in federal courts arguing that same sex marriage should not be legalized and, along with a handful of others, are going to file their objections with the Supreme Court. Read more
