[Theology] Original Sin in the Bible

"The first mention of the concept of Original Sin is found, not in Genesis, where the fatal event was supposed to happen, but in the fifth chapter of Romans, written by Paul. According to Paul, humanity was cursed because Adam sinned when he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

[...]

At no point [in Genesis 3:14-19] do we see anything that might qualify as a curse of "Original Sin" to be handed down to all of Adam's descendants. Sure, their lives are supposed to become much more difficult than what they had heretofore experienced; but where in all of that is the "Sin" being passed along?

[...]

The rest of the Old Testament is of no help to Christian theology in this area: from this point in Genesis all of the way through the ending of Malachi, there isn't the slightest hint of there being any sort of Original Sin inherited by all humans through Adam. There are plenty of stories of God getting angry at humanity in general and at the Jews in particular, thus offering many opportunities for God to point out how everyone is "sinful" because of Adam. Yet we read nothing about that."

Atheism.about.com, May 5, 2007

[Ideology] Isn't Atheism the Same as Communism? Doesn't Atheism Lead to Communism?

"A common complaint made by theists, typically those of the fundamentalist variety, is that atheism and/or humanism are essentially socialist or communist in nature. Thus, atheism and humanism should be rejected since socialism and communism are evil. Evidence indicates that bigotry and prejudice towards atheists in America is due in no small part to anti-communist activism by conservatives Christians in America, so this claimed connection has had serious consequences for American atheists.

[...]

Communism is not, however, inherently atheistic. It is possible to hold communist or socialist economic views while being a theist and it isn't at all uncommon to be an atheist while staunchly defending capitalism — a combination often found among Objectivists and Libertarians, for example. Their existence alone demonstrates, without question, that atheism and communism are not the same thing."

Atheism.about.com, May 10, 2007

[Secularisation] Mina’s ex-Muslim group spawns a movement

"The Iranian women's rights and human rights activist Mina Ahadi, who founded the Central Committee of ex-Muslims in Germany, seems to have started a trend. Following her valiant example, activist in the Netherlands have set about founding their own organisation of ex-Muslims."

National Secular Society Fri, 11 May 2007

I might as well mention that there's a group of people trying to start such an organisation in Norway as well, although it seems they had some disagreements on policy (homosexuality and Israel was mentioned). Anyway, this development is welcome for two reasons: 1. It will diminish the possibility of the Fundamentalist and Conservative Muslims to speak on behalf of everyone with a Muslim background. 2. Europeans will feel less threatened by Muslims when we see that they are getting more secular.

[Theology] Little-Known Bible Verses VI: Slavery

"Civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were famous for their use of biblical allusions to demand liberty for all human beings, and from their writings, many believers today have gotten the idea that the Bible teaches the equality of all people. But nothing could be farther from the truth, as we can see from a set of little-known Bible verses.

[...]

"The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. —Luke 12:46-47"

[...]

"These verses and others like them were not overlooked by slaveholders of the American antebellum. On the contrary, in the period leading up to the American Civil War, Southern slaveholders repeatedly cited these verses against abolitionists, as proof that slavery was a just and proper institution sanctioned by God."

Daylightatheism.org 10 May 2007

[History] The National Day of Prayer

"The bill creating this national observance was signed into law in 1952 by President Harry Truman, and another bill fixing its date as the first Thursday in May was signed in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan. [...] Sadly, America has become blind to the wisdom of great men like Thomas Jefferson, who specifically refused to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer when he was president:

"I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it… Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.""

Daylightatheism.org 10 May 2007

[Science] Is doing the right thing hard-wired?

"What gives people the ability to tell right from wrong? Is the moral sense instilled in us by God? Is it inculcated through religious training? Or does moral judgment vary according to the culture in which we were raised?

[...]

Another important building block in the evolution of a moral sense is cooperation, which takes three different forms in the animal world. The first is cooperation based on kinship. An animal that sacrifices to benefit its offspring, for example, helps to protect their shared genes. In the second type, both individuals receive some cost, but both benefit. Cooperative hunting behavior is an example of this type. The third and rarest type is reciprocity, where an individual gives something up with the expectation that it will receive benefit in the future. The Golden Rule, Hauser said, is a formulation in human terms of this adaptation."

Harvard University Gazette, May 3, 2007

If you've read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins then this is familiar, because he refers to Hauser's work there (on page 222 and onwards to be exact).

Update: Another interview with Marc Hauser

[Stats] How many has God killed? (Complete list and estimated total)

"In a previous post, I've listed and counted God's killings in the Bible. But I only included those that said exactly how many were killed by God. I came up with 2,270,365.

But that didn't include some of God's most impressive slaughters. How many did God drown in the flood or burn to death in Sodom and Gomorrah? How many first-born Egyptians did he kill? The Bible doesn't say, so there's no way to know for sure. But it's possible to provide rough estimates in order to get a grand total, and that's what I'm attempting here. (New total: 32.9 million.) "

dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com, 13 January 2007

[Stats] Bell tolls for Germany's churches

"A recent study by Dresdner Bank predicted that in the coming years, 50% of Germany's churches may close or be turned into other uses. The nation's Roman Catholic Church is expected to stop services in 700 of its 24,500 churches by 2015."

latimes.com, April 22, 2007

[Stats] Religion, tax-evasion and violence top list of ad complaints

"Consumers complained about a record number of adverts last year -- including those of a gay association, government department and fashion giant.

[...]

An advert by the Gay Police Association -- picturing a Bible to highlight religious motivation behind homophobic incidents -- was the most maligned.
It attracted 553 complaints, with people finding it offensive to Christians and discriminatory in tone."

Scotsman.com 09-May-07

Discriminatory in tone?

Leviticus: 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

Much better and not discriminatory in tone!

[Study] Mothers Spiritually Active; Fathers Lag Behind

"Mothers are among the most spiritually active segments of the America population, a new study found. They also outpace fathers in spiritual activity and commitment for the most part.
The Barna research group revealed that three-quarters of women who are raising children said faith is very important in their life while only two-thirds of fathers agreed. The majority of mothers also said they have been greatly transformed by their faith compared to less than half of fathers.

[...]

Additionally, mothers were more likely than fathers to be born-again Christians, to say they are absolutely committed to Christianity, and to embrace a personal responsibility to share their faith in Jesus Christ with others.

[...]

The Barna study further measured differences between younger and older mothers. Moms from the Buster generation (ages 23-41) show less passion for spirituality and less commitment to Christianity than moms from the Boomer generation (ages 42-60). Young moms are less likely to volunteer to help at a church, to read the Bible or to attend worship services at a church and they are less inclined to describe their faith as very important in their life compared to Boomer moms."

Christian Post, Mon, May. 07 2007

I think perhaps some feminists need to realize that women help fuelling the system they criticize.

[Comment] Those fanatical atheists

"Then there's the problem on the other side -- among the atheists such as Richard Dawkins who have been labelled "fanatics." Now, it is absolutely true that Dawkins' tone is often as charming as fingernails dragged slowly down a chalkboard. But just what is the core of Dawkins' radical message?

Well, it goes something like this: If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

That's it. That's the whole, crazy, fanatical package."

Dan Gardiner, The Ottawa Citizen, May 05, 2007

An excellent comment!

[stats] Norway: 68 percent skeptical to religious organisations

Some good news here. There's been conducted a national survey on integration of immigrants in Norway(by the Dept. of Integration), and part of it dealt with Norwegians' attitudes Islam. That question is a complex political question and I'll leave that alone here, but more immediately interesting for us was the control question on religious organisations in general which they asked.

Respondents are asked to rate how this statement fits to their own attitude:

"I am generally skeptical to religious organisations and communities/congregations"

Results:
Fits completely 33%
Fits pretty good: 35%
Fits pretty bad: 21%
Does not fit at all: 8%
No reply: 2%

Norwegian PDF ( page 63)

[Survey] Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom?

"Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

[...]

Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians probably have two causes: "the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some evangelicals.""

Washington Post, May 5, 2007

A whining article (In the Moonie-owned Washington Post), but interesting nevertheless. It seems being anti-science does not give Evangelicals much credit in classrooms. Probably as little credit as science get in their churches.

[Psychology] Appaling acts in God's name

"The [Catholic] priest who hears confessions encounters a wide range of sexual practices, ranging from adultery to homosexuality, and masturbation to zoophilia. Do we really understand and appreciate the force of this knowledge on a priest whose sexual experience is limited? Isn't this something like the experiment in which people are instructed not to think about a white elephant, and who then find themselves unable to avoid thinking of that elephant? "

Nielsen, M. E. (2003). Appalling acts in god's name. Society, 40(3), 16-19.

[Warning] US evangelicals aim to influence European law

”—In Britain, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an organization founded by American evangelical leaders, is funding a lawsuit brought by a Christian man who was fired for refusing to work on Sunday. It is also helping to develop the legal strategy.
—In Sweden, ADF played a key role in persuading the Supreme Court to dismiss charges against Ake Green, a pastor who was convicted of hate-crime charges after he delivered a sermon in which he called gays a “deep cancerous tumor in the entire society.”
—In Aruba and the Czech Republic, Pat Robertson’s legal organization, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), helped defeat bills that would have legalized same-sex unions.
—In France, ACLJ affiliate ECLJ (the European Center for Law and Justice), is staging a legal challenge against an antisect law that it says is being used to clamp down on evangelical Christian churches.
—And on the European Union level, ECLJ is lobbying to block funding for embryonic stem-cell research.”

evangelicalright.com April 20 2007

See also Christian Science Monitor Oh, and use protection!

[History] Humanism in Ancient Rome

Although much of what we regard as the ancient forerunners of humanism tend to be found in Greece, the original humanists of the European Renaissance first looked to the forerunners who were also their own ancestors: the Romans.

[...]

Like Epicurus, Lucretius sought to free humanity from the fear of death and of the gods, which he considered the primary cause of human unhappiness.

[...]

Lucretius insisted that the soul is not a distinct, immaterial entity but instead just a chance combination of atoms that does not survive the body. He also postulated purely natural causes for earthly phenomena in order to prove that the world is not directed by divine agency and that fear of the supernatural is consequently without reasonable foundation. Lucretius did not deny the existence of gods, but like Epicurus he conceived of them as having no concern with the affairs or destiny of mortals.

atheism.about.com, May 3, 2007

[Stats] Why the gods are not winning

"A myth is gaining ground. The myth seems plausible enough. The proposition is that after God died in the secular 20th century, He is back in a big way as people around the world again find faith. [...]

The evangelical authors of the WCE lament that no Christian "in 1900 expected the massive defections from Christianity that subsequently took place in Western Europe due to secularism…. and in the Americas due to materialism…. The number of nonreligionists…. throughout the 20th century has skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900, to 697 million in 1970, and on to 918 million in AD 2000…. Equally startling has been the meteoritic growth of secularism…. Two immense quasi-religious systems have emerged at the expense of the world's religions: agnosticism…. and atheism…. From a miniscule presence in 1900, a mere 0.2% of the globe, these systems…. are today expanding at the extraordinary rate of 8.5 million new converts each year, and are likely to reach one billion adherents soon. A large percentage of their members are the children, grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of persons who in their lifetimes were practicing Christians""

edge.org May 1 , 2007

[Stats] Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World

"This map reflects the fact that a large number of basic values are closely correlated; they can be depicted in just major two dimensions of cross-cultural variation."

Quick explanation: Sweden good, Zimbabwe bad. You'll find the most religious and traditionalist countries at the bottom here.
A bit overwhelming, but when you've read the accompanying text and studied the map for a while it start making sense!

[Stats] Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns

"Assessing rates of belief or disbelief among large populations is extremely difficult. Determining what percentage of a given society believes in God – or doesn’t -- is fraught with methodological difficulties, most importantly: 1) low response rates, 2) non-random samples, 3) adverse political or cultural climates, and 4) problematic cross-cultural terminology. A brief discussion of each is warranted before presenting an accumulation of statistics concerning rates and patterns of atheism worldwide.

[...]

According to Inglehart et al (2004), 31% of those in Norway do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 54% of Norwegians said that they did not believe in “a personal God.” According to Greeley (2003), 41% of Norwegians do not believe in God, although only 10% self-identify as “atheist.” According to Gustafsson and Pettersson (2002), 72% of Norwegians do not believe in a “personal God.” According to Froese (2001), 45% of Norwegians are either atheist or agnostic."

This chapter is forth-coming in the Cambridge Companion to Atheism, edited by Michael Martin, Cambridge University Press, 2005

A very thorough summary! Being Norwegian I took out the part about Norway as an example.

[Islam] "Misguided women"

"The ninjas. The burqa brigade. The women in black. For some years now I've been hearing such terms thrown around with disdain by "burqa-unfriendly" sections of Pakistani society to describe the women who swathe themselves entirely in black.

[...]

Then, in March, dozens of girls from Jamia Hafsa kidnapped three women and a baby from a house they claimed was a brothel. Next they kidnapped two policemen. Newspaper front pages were splashed with pictures of the ninjas chasing away plain-clothes policemen while wielding long sticks. They have also taken to patrolling the bazaars, threatening the owners of DVD and CD stores, which they claim spread pornography and vice."

New Statesman 30 April 2007

In short: Islamic Hitler Jugend for girls

[History] The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today

"[...] the clash between institutional Catholicism and emergent Protestantism contributed to the collapse of a stable world-view, which eventually led to panic and hyper-suspiciousness on the part of Catholic and Protestant authorities alike.

[...]

This helps us understand why only the most rapidly developing countries, where the Catholic church was weakest, experienced a virulent witch craze (i.e., Germany, France, Switzerland). Where the Catholic church was strong (Spain, Italy, Portugal) hardly any witch craze occurred ... the Reformation was definitely the first time that the church had to cope with a large-scale threat to its very existence and legitimacy."

[...]

It is notable that the witch-hunts lost most of their momentum with the end of the Thirty Years War (Peace of Westphalia, 1648), which "gave official recognition and legitimacy to religious pluralism."

Gendercide.org

[History] The Role of Islam in African Slavery (Pt 1)

"Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the (moveable) property, of the slave owner.

[...]

Slaves were obtained through conquest, tribute from vassal states (in the first such treaty, Nubia was required to provide hundreds of male and female slaves), offspring (children of slaves were also slaves, but since many slaves were castrated this was not as common as it had been in the Roman empire), and purchase. The latter method provided the majority of slaves, and at the borders of the Islamic Empire vast number of new slaves were castrated ready for sale (Islamic law did not allow mutilation of slaves, so it was done before they crossed the border)."

Africanhistory.about.com April 25, 2007 (follow link for pt2)