We already know churches are businesses and those who run them are sometimes in the business of helping themselves as much as they say they’re helping others. So the fact that Oxygen is set to air a TV show called “Preachers of L.A.” featuring prosperity gospel preachers driving fancy cars and living in mansions should come as no surprise to anyone: “P. Diddy. Jay-Z. They’re not the only ones who should be driving Ferraris and living in large houses,” argues [Bishop Ron] Gibson, pastor at 4,500-member Life Church of God in Christ. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Okay guys, my bags are packed and I’m on my way to Las Vegas to cover the one, the only, The Amazing Meeting for all of you fine folks. A weekend full of science and skepticism and, likely, wine await me. Here’s how it’s going to go down: I’ll be liveblogging all of the talks and panels, while my trusty side-kick/expert photographer/gentleman friend, Mikey, will be taking pictures and video. I am also going to have the opportunity to sit down with some of the speakers for interviews, which I am planning on recording and uploading in a sort of podcast-like fashion so we can get those to you quickly. (Apologies in advance for my lack of a radio-friendly voice, I shall try to leave the bulk of the talking to people smarter than myself.) As it’s my first trip to TAM, I am not sure what’s waiting for me this weekend, but I can tell you that Mikey and I are going to be working our butts off to make sure you all feel like you’re there. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Sally Le Page explains the concept of Inclusive Fitness in a brilliant Shed Science video. (Even if you don’t care one bit about evolutionary biology, you’re going to want to watch this!) Highlight comes at the 2:35 mark 🙂 (Thanks to Andy for the link!) Read more
Christianity Today asked a panel of experts whether interfaith marriage was ever okay, especially given the Biblical dictate about not being “unequally yoked.” For the most part, the panel accepted interfaith marriages as a natural consequence of our society, but they had some limitations. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Evangelical pseudo-historian David Barton is the latest big-name conservative to get all worked up over the country’s growing acceptance of marriage equality, but he says he doesn’t even need God to back up his anti-gay stance. This week on his radio program, WallBuilders, Barton claimed that “homosexual marriage” has proven to be a flop in the 12 nations where it’s legal. (Actually, it’s 13 countries — with France being the most recent country to legalize same-sex marriage, and Uruguay and New Zealand having same-sex marriage laws going into effect later this year.) Misrepresenting a ten-year-old study, Barton said: I don’t need religion or a Bible to prove that homosexual marriage is not a good deal for a country. We have now twelve nations who have adopted homosexual marriage; they have stats. Jesus did give us a good admonition in Matthew 7 that you can judge a tree by its fruits, so if I take the nations that have homosexual marriage and I look at them, I say okay, in those nations where you have homosexuals allowed to marry, only two percent of homosexuals do marry. So even though they want homosexual marriage, 98% of homosexuals don’t marry when they [can] get it and the average homosexual marriage lasts eighteen months and involves eight extra-marital partners. Now by what stretch of the imagination would you consider that to be a marriage? (The audio clip from the original program is available here via Right Wing Watch.) [Click headline for more…] Read more
A couple of weeks ago, in Wyoming County, West Virginia, a group of church leaders built a Ten Commandments monument in front of the county courthouse. They did it without permission from county officials, a detail that makes this story all the more disturbing. (Of course, even if they had received permission, it wouldn’t have made it okay.) This is a pretty easy fix — either the church group needs to get that monument off the property, or the floodgates have opened and any group that wants to can put up a monument of their own. County officials aren’t even considering that second option yet because they’re under the impression there’s nothing illegal about this. The best part is how one official is justifying it: [Click headline for more…] Read more
A Buddhist retreat in the desert would seem like a place of peace, and ordained monk Michael Roach’s commune in Arizona’s Apache Highlands was just that — if you discount the jealousy, the backbiting, the domestic abuse, and the knife attack. Rolling Stone has a long piece on the peculiar goings-on in Roach’s mystical cult. Journalist Nina Burleigh was brave for writing it, as Roach is a man who, according to his followers, …can walk through walls, see into the future and, some believe, cast powerful spells against those who cross him. This may be the most entertaining paragraph in Burleigh’s article: To underscore the importance of one’s teacher, Roach’s acolytes consumed dutsi, pills that supposedly contain bits of symbolic scatological material going back to Buddha (a secretive practice among Tibetan Buddhist initiates). “People worked for free in order to catapult their karma out of the prosaic shitter,” says Morris [a source]. “So you had a lot of people eating shit, literally and figuratively.” If you’d like to make your own, start with a non-constipated cow. And for Shiva’s sake, don’t let the cow doo-doo hit the ground, ’cause that would make it impure. [Click headline for more…] Read more
A new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders and reported on in the New York Times suggests that belief in God can lead to better outcomes for patients with mental health treatment: Over all, those who rated their spiritual belief as most important to them appeared to be less depressed after treatment than those with little or no belief. They also appeared less likely to engage in self-harming behaviors. “Patients who had higher levels of belief in God demonstrated more effects of treatment,” said the study’s lead author, David H. Rosmarin, a psychologist at McLean Hospital and director of the Center for Anxiety in New York. “They seemed to get more bang for their buck, so to speak.” Does that mean God actually helps patients in a hospital? No, of course not. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series discusses Jainism, the religion in which I was raised and that held its annual convention last week in Detroit, Michigan. In the video, I reference an old post detailing my problems with Jainism and you can read that post here. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next! Read more
