Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Nigeria has long been known as the home country of countless Internet scammers, but Reuters reminds us that some of the country’s megachurch pastors have devised their own get-rich-quick schemes modeled after shining U.S. examples like Benny Hinn, Paul Crouch, and Jim Bakker. Some of the churches can hold more than 200,000 worshippers and, with their attendant business empires, they constitute a significant section of the economy, employing tens of thousands of people and raking in tourist dollars, as well as exporting Christianity globally. … [TB] Joshua draws miracle-seekers from all over the world with claims that the holy water he has blessed cures otherwise incurable ailments such as HIV/AIDS. And Ebola! “We see giving as the only way to be blessed. Blessing other people is a way of keeping the blessings flowing,” said [David] Oyedepo (pictured), whose blessings include a Gulfstream V jet and several BMWs. Read more
Appalling violence between Muslims and Christians is front and center in this New Yorker article from John Lee Anderson, who reports from Bossemptele in the Central African Republic (CAR). According to Anderson, the factions long lived together in relative peace, but in 2012 things began to go very wrong. A Muslim rebel group called the Seleka began an incursion into Christian areas, and the Christians in turn started their own armed group, the Antibalaka, which quickly went from a defensive civilian army to a genocidal organization hellbent on eliminating Muslims from the country of 4.5 million people. The Seleka kept up their atrocities: burning people alive, killing hospital patients, throwing bound prisoners off bridges to drown. Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, who spent months investigating the conflict, said, “Just think the four horsemen of the apocalypse and you’ll have the picture. People really hated them. That’s what got the Antibalaka going.” … The [Antibalaka] fighters were emboldened by the belief, inspired by animist traditions, that they were protected by magic. They festooned themselves with wigs, costumes, and amulets to ward off attacks, and assembled an arsenal of bows with poison-tipped arrows, machetes, and a few hunting rifles. Dieudonné [“God-given,” one of the founders of the Antibalaka movement] proudly recounted their exploits in early battles, seizing weapons and killing Seleka. When I pointed out that his men had killed entire families, he put on an obstinate look. “Yes, but the Seleka killed entire families,” he said. “They killed our people and left our parents to be eaten by dogs. We balanced things out. That’s vengeance, isn’t it?” Read more
A New Zealand church that critics have called a cash cult is shelling out big money to transport its leaders, Brian and Hannah Tamaki, in the style they believe they deserve. The Tamakis, who run Destiny Church, dipped into church funds to finance the ride and will henceforth be zipping around town in an Audi Q7, valued at NZ$100,000 (about 78,000 U.S. dollars). Meanwhile, the charity — we’ll have to agree to use the word loosely — is a year behind on filing its latest tax return. Read more
Stronzo Bestiale is a researcher at the Institute for Experimental Physics in Vienna who is a co-author on a small number of major scientific papers. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed publications that include the Journal of Statistical Physics and The Journal of Chemical Physics. He’s also a figment of someone’s imagination, which becomes evident when you learn that Stronzo Bestiale, in Italian, means Total Turd, Asshole Beast, or Complete Asshole, depending on whom you ask. The man who breathed life into this Asshole (sorry for that image) is a retired scientist, William G. Hoover, who was formerly employed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A writer named Vito Tartamella (whose name, I sincerely hope, doesn’t mean “Blithering Buttwipe”) finally noticed how unlikely the Stronzo name is and got in touch with Hoover to ask about it. Read more
Kaveh Mousavi (a pseudonym) is, according to his online bio, … an atheist ex-Muslim living in Iran, subject to one of the world’s remaining theocracies… He was born at the tenth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. He has ditched the Islamic part, but has kept some of the revolutionary spirit. While he was getting his brand new Patheos blog set up, Kaveh wrote a guest post over at Dan Fincke’s place, in which he describes what it’s like to be an atheist in Iran. As you can imagine, “picnic” and “walk in the park” aren’t in Kaveh’s lexicon. It shapes your life maybe more than any other thing about you. If you are not a 12-Imam Shiite, you lose most of the opportunities in life. And if you are not a practicing member of one of the four “official” religions, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, you officially don’t exist. In the forms you have to fill out to get jobs or register for anything, these options are the only four options. According to the Islamic Republic, you have no right to have jobs, study in universities, open a bank account, or live, unless you belong to one of these four religions. Read more
