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The devil gonna gitcha

Dec 13th, 2011 3:57 pm | By

Ah the pope – the dear dear man.

Cristina Vai, 55, a teacher for 30 years, was disciplined after several parents complained that children had come home sobbing and frightened.

They said they were scared of her graphic description of battles between good angels and the Devil from the Book of the
Apocalypse.

The school suspended her; she was shocked; she wrote to the pope to tell him about it; she got a reply within days.

In the letter Monsignor Peter Wells, an assistant with the Pope’s Secretary of State, said: ‘The Holy Father thanks you
with all his heart for your faithful gesture and for the sentiments that have inspired you.

‘His Holiness also sends you from his

… Read the rest

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Pope backs teacher who made children cry with fear *

Dec 13th, 2011 | Filed by

They were frightened by her graphic description of battles between good angels and the devil. The pope thanked her.… Read the rest

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Franca Ogbu is the victim of a horrific acid attack *

Dec 13th, 2011 | Filed by

The government of Nigeria has failed to prosecute her attacker. Busayo Obisakin has created a petition seeking prosecution. Here it is.… Read the rest

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Heads we win, tails we win

Dec 13th, 2011 12:49 pm | By

Another vulture licks his filthy chops and suggests that Hitchens may be about to convert to Christianity.

Perhaps Hitchens’s admission that Nietzsche might have been wrong, even about  something small, will lead him to a healthy curiosity about Christianity. Up  until now, Hitchens has had nothing but bile for Christianity and all religion — including the religion of Marxism, which Hitchens, a former leftist, eventually  admitted could not survive “the onslaught of reality.” But Hitchens’s attacks on  religion were always propelled by the kind of fury that one usually finds in  zealots and former believers; it’s always the ex-Catholics (Maureen Dowd, etc.)  who are the hardest on the Church.

Not a bit of it. There are plenty of us … Read the rest

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Surprised, surprised

Dec 13th, 2011 11:36 am | By

I’m not the only one who is bemused at Julian’s effortful discovery and announcement of what everyone already knew. Eric is too. So is Jerry Coyne.

Eric points out in his title that he could have told Julian that – “that” being, in Julian’s words,

They believe that Jesus is divine, not simply an exceptional human being; that his resurrection was a real, bodily one; that he performed miracles no human being ever could; that he needed to die on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven; and that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. On many of these issues, a significant minority are uncertain but in all cases it is only a small minority

… Read the rest

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Nerds and male privilege *

Dec 13th, 2011 | Filed by

It’s hard to feel valued or fully included when a very vocal group insists that your input is irrelevant, misguided and ultimately unwelcome.… Read the rest

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Hey kids – want to get dead?

Dec 12th, 2011 4:49 pm | By

Ohhhhhhhhhh dear god. Meet Stephanie Messenger, author of a children’s book about the wonders of having measles.

As Reasonable Hank points out, measles make you sick.

Measles can be deadly. Recent outbreaks in Australia, the US, and New Zealand are all traced back to unvaccinated individuals. The overwhelming majority of those infected are unvaccinated or undervaccinated individuals. In Europe there have been several deaths this year alone.

Yet there’s an imbecile who wrote a book teaching children that vaccinations are ineffective and to embrace childhood disease. Fuuuuuck.… Read the rest

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He has all the right enemies

Dec 12th, 2011 4:06 pm | By

The FT (I’ll refrain from belaboring the irony, apart from saying I’m refraining) does a profile of Peter Tatchell.

Tatchell’s campaigns for gay rights, racial equality, civil liberties and democracy have attracted death threats, bullets and bombs from an unsavoury mixture of homophobes, neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists.

“The bricks now bounce off the windows,” Tatchell jokes, “although I can’t walk outside and feel totally relaxed.” Nonetheless, the man who made front pages around the world in 1999 by attempting a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe  remains an indomitable campaigner. He has just returned from addressing the  Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, which is the kind of “tent city” protest that he proposed three decades ago.

He lives in … Read the rest

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Nominate your nominations

Dec 12th, 2011 3:06 pm | By

The Skeptic is giving awards for best skeptical things in several categories. This is its debut in the awards business, so give it a big hand!

Please join in, by voting for:

  • The best podcast
  • The best blog
  • The best event, campaign or outreach event of the year. This could be an organisation or website that has done a particular task over a period of time, or it could be one event which has helped to raise public awareness of a skeptical issue
  • The best science video clip on the web
  • The best sceptical video clip on the web

We’ll sort the five most popular of your podcast, blog and event/campaign/outreach nominations and present them to our panel of judges

… Read the rest

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Kill the witch!

Dec 12th, 2011 11:33 am | By

Religion as compassion in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi woman has been executed for practising “witchcraft and sorcery”, the country’s interior ministry says.

A statement published by the state news agency said Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded on Monday in the northern province of Jawf.

She wasn’t stoned to death. That’s the compassion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpLpy4VSJXE

Amnesty says that Saudi Arabia does not actually define sorcery as a capital
offence. However, some of its conservative clerics have urged the strongest
possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to
Islam.

And we can’t have threats to Islam, because if we did, conservative clerics would be out of a job, and no longer in a position to … Read the rest

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The inconvenient truth about Islam from an ex-Muslim *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Nazanin was imprisoned and raped by the Islamic regime in Iran for opposing veiling.… Read the rest

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BBC on Saudi woman beheaded for ‘sorcery’ *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Conservative clerics have urged the strongest possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to Islam.… Read the rest

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Religion is about literal doctrines after all

Dec 12th, 2011 10:07 am | By

So after weeks of heavy breathing, Julian’s Heathen’s Progress arrives at what we already knew – that believers actually do believe the tenets of their religion.

So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value. They believe that Jesus is divine, not simply an exceptional human being; that his resurrection was a real, bodily one; that he performed miracles no human being ever could; that he needed to die on the cross so that

… Read the rest

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Newsflash: Christians actually believe orthodox doctrine *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

No kidding.… Read the rest

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Saudi Arabia executes woman for ‘sorcery’ *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

She was convicted of practicing magic and sorcery.… Read the rest

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The Skeptic Magazine inaugurates The Skeptic Awards *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Nominate best podcast, blog, event, science video, skepticism video. Awards will be presented at QEDCon in Machester in March 2012.… Read the rest

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Up a steep hill

Dec 11th, 2011 4:44 pm | By

Steve Jones wrote about denial of science in the Telegraph the other day.

Anyone, of course, is free to believe whatever they wish. But why train to become a biologist, or a doctor, when you deny the very foundations of your subject? For a biology student to refuse to accept the fact of evolution is equivalent to choosing to do a degree in English without believing in grammar, or in physics with a rooted objection to gravity: it makes no sense at all. The same is true for doctors. How can you put a body right with no idea as to why it is liable to go wrong?

I suppose the idea is that you do it by following … Read the rest

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We drift and dabble

Dec 11th, 2011 11:42 am | By

Oh goody, another more in sorrow than in anger rumination on Atheists Are As Bad As Theists And Vice Versa for a Sunday.

For a nation of talkers and self-confessors, we are terrible when it comes to talking about God. The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other. What about the rest of us?

What does he – Eric Weiner – mean “co-opted”? What does he even mean “what about the rest of us” – what about them? “Angry Atheists” haven’t “co-opted” anything, and the rest of us are just as able to speak up as the people Weiner is trying to portray as marginal.

It’s such a typical and … Read the rest

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Here he is, he’s all yours

Dec 11th, 2011 11:05 am | By

Some parents in Irvine California suspected their son, age 15, of smoking. So they sat him down and explained to him how useful it is to be able to breathe freely, how addictive tobacco is, how bad smoking makes you smell, right?

Not quite. They asked a guy to beat the kid up for them (authorities said).

 An Irvine couple who suspected their 15-year-old son of smoking turned to a man believed to be relied on in their church to violently discipline children, authorities said.

Ah in their church – relied on in their church. Uh…whut? So people who attend this church have a designated guy who beats their children, and this is understood and relied on? Funny kind of … Read the rest

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Parents ask a man to beat their child *

Dec 11th, 2011 | Filed by

They suspected their 15-year-old son of smoking, so turned to a man believed to be relied
on in their church to “discipline” children by beating them.… Read the rest

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