I Heart U

I just love it when someone from Liberty University visits my blog.

Putting Prayer to Good Work

Prayers are wonderful, right? Sometimes, Christians pray that god will fix them up if they are injured or if a child is sick. Sometimes god feels like it, and sometimes god doesn't. If someone disagrees with you about belief in God, some Christians pray that god will reprogram them.

But sometimes, an even more special type of prayer is required if reprogramming is simply not enough.

"Pastor Riley Drake from Buena Park, Calif., is praying for God to smite Obama with “plagues, death and eternal damnation,” according to the source."

Don't worry about it though, the Pastor only spends 2% of his prayer allowance on bad things, and the balance is allegedly on good things. Of course, if the president did die of "death" -- something which Drake apparently desires -- would he consider it a "bad thing?"

I doubt it. I would hate to see what this clown prays for when he really desires as a "bad thing" to happen at god's hand. This chicken-shit pastor is too scared to his own heavy-lifting so he prays to god to do it for him. (That's a good thing though.) All this is from a website which bills itself as "Church Solutions: Learn. Build. Grow." Ha ha.

What is it with you far right-wing lunatic Christians anyway? It must be the belief in absurdities that also make it possible for you to fail to recognize the atrocities which you pro-actively pray for.

No doubt there.

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Could it be Satan?

This past January, Catholics were ordered by the Pope to shut up over visions of the Virgin Mary, until a team of investigators first disqualify the possibility that "Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful."

Thousands of Irish Catholics have flocked this week to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow that many observers say, has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary.

This all started when a worker cut down a tree near a church when "one lad beside the one who'd made the cut immediately saw the outline of Our Lady and blessed himself" and discovered it. This has brought thousands of people to pay homage to the blessed stump and offer prayers and religious chotchkies of devotion.

Reacting to the worship of the stump, Reverend Willie Russel ironically commented that its "just a tree. You don't worship a tree." I suppose if we apply Christian logic that if numbers of believers is what justifies the veracity of a peculiar belief, then we would have to dismiss Russel's skepticism. I have to wonder if Russel has committed a crime against god according to Ireland's new blasphemy law?

Anyway, I am wondering when the Office of the Inquisition will show up and determine whether this vision of the Virgin Mary in wood is the work of God, Satan, or the most rational explanation, pareidolia. Really, really, really bad pareidolia at that. If it wasn't for this stump's proximity to a church, do you really think these believers would be huddled around it? While the reverend is warning against superstition, one believer observed that the church as long accepted prayer "in front of statues which are marble and chalk."

Apparently, God doesn't mind if marble and chalk statues are relocated. According to the same believer that removal of the blessed stump could only be done "at our peril."

Yeah. No superstition here.

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Cannibalism. Yum Yum.

From Blog Phtos

What is the Loonisphere?

Ed Brayton describes it:

"This new term occurred to me as a useful one for those of us who regularly chronicle the nuttiness of the right wing: the Loonisphere. The loonisphere is a magical place where the laws of logic do not apply. A place where not allowing someone to oppress another is a violation of the oppressor's religious freedom, where quitting one's job is done to avoid being a quitter, where destroying the constitution is necessary to prevent terrorists from destroying the constitution and where someone who advocates killing untold numbers of people in another country can call themself "pro-life" without a hint of irony."

There are two prime representatives of the Loonisphere, bloggers Jim Hayett and Amy Hemmer on the Lake Country blogs. But I'd add one other "loonism "to Ed's list. Creationists who argue that "there is no scientific proof that it (creationism) didn't happen essentially as the Book of Genesis describes," while simultaneously arguing that the Genesis account is a fact.

Creationist liars for Jesus want it both ways. They claim that the Bible is scientifically plausible while diss'n the very methodology that could prove its validity. Evolution is diametrically opposed to ex nihilio creation that the Genesis fable directs our creationist liars to lie, and it is from this strawman that creationist's claim victory over science.

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Michael Shermer on WPR this morning

I had no clue that author and editor of Skeptic Magazine, Micheal Shermer was going to be on WPR (90.4 MKE/Delafield) this morning discussing skepticism and the need for a new baloney detection kit.

I caught the last 10 minutes of the program. Hopefully WPR will release of podcast of the show.

In the meantime, here's a video which talks about what a baloney detection kit is by Shermer.

Here's a class I'd like to take at UW Milwaukee

I've been wanting to return to college for some time and take classes out of interest and not just for my degree -- which a decade ago was primarily graphic design. I took plenty of other courses in journalism, corporate communications, but did not get many of the upper level humanities that I would have liked to have taken. I was already stretched pretty thin between three jobs and an average 15 credit load. I was preparing myself to be a good little corporate drone.

If you live in the metro Milwaukee area, or planning to attended Milwaukee this fall, and religion and atheism is your thing, this class might be extremely interesting to you. It is to me.

Philosophy 192, Freshman Seminar: Atheism (HU)
SEM 001, MW 9:30 – 10:45, CRT 607
Instructor: William Bristow, bristow@uwm.edu
Freshman Only.

Can a compelling philosophical case be made for atheism? Can a compelling philosophical case be made against religious faith? On philosophical grounds? On natural scientific grounds? (What is the difference?) What is the conception of religious faith that is the target of such arguments? -- We examine these and other related questions through examining the arguments contained in four recently-published best-selling works in which prominent intellectuals (scientists, philosophers, et cetera) undertake to make the case against religious faith and for atheism: Sam Harris, The End of Faith, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great. We will examine these authors’ arguments and positions critically, while situating their arguments in a broader philosophical and historical context.

Sounds like the course will be examining the major works of the "new atheists." I've read all but Dennett's books. I would love to take this class!

Oh to be in college again.

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