Mikey Weinstein Tackles the Evangelical Coup in America's Military

"We currently have 737 U.S. military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges. It’s actually closer to a thousand military installations scattered around the globe -- in 132 countries. On every one of those military installations, we have something called the Officers' Christian Fellowship, for the officers, and for the enlisted folks, the Christian Military Fellowship.
They have a three-part goal that they are completely unabashed about –- it’s right on their website -– a goal they view as much higher than following the oath they have sworn, to support, defend, protect and preserve the Constitution. Their goals are, A, they want to see a spiritually transformed U.S. military; B, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform; and C, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

[...]

Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? But after 9/11, a new mega-Evangelical church has opened up in our country every 48 hours.
That is their right. That’s fine. But when they engage the machinery of the state and the people in the government, that’s when we have a terrible, hideous problem.
And this is coming right down from the Oval Office, up and down the chain of command. And let’s remember, at the Pentagon, we actually have regulations that prohibit military members from even pushing Tupperware, Mary Kay cosmetics, or Amway, for fear of what the Draconian spectre of command influence could force a subordinate to do."

Michael L. Weinstein, BuzzFlash, 06/13/2007

Polygamy fueling Arizonas rate of genetic disorder

“Arizona has about half the world’s population of known fumarase deficiency patients,” said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

[...]

“It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you’re inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition,” he said.
The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

[...]

Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men — John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop — who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.
“There aren’t any new people coming in. It’s a closed door and that gene just keeps getting passed around,” said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust of the sect’s assets.

Msnbc.msn.com, June 14, 2007

We actually see the same thing with Pakistani immigrants in Norway. A lot of them come from the same rural area in Pakistan, and they have been inbreeding between cousins for quite a while. Traditions are to blame.

Atheists, Agnostics less likely to vote in USA

"A new study by The Barna Group examines the numbers, lifestyles and self-perceptions of America’s atheists and agnostics, contrasting the no-faith audience with those who actively participate in the Christian faith.

[...]

In the study, the no-faith segment was defined as anyone who openly identified themselves as an atheist, an agnostic, or who specifically said they have "no faith." In total, this group represents a surprisingly small slice of the adult population, about one out of every 11 Americans (9%). However, in a nation of more than 220 million adults, that comprises roughly 20 million people.

[...]

Atheists and agnostics are distinct demographically from the active-faith segment. The no-faith audience is younger, and more likely to be male and unmarried. They also earn more and are more likely to be college graduates.

[...]

Atheists and agnostics are also significantly less likely to say they are convinced they are right about things in life (38% versus 55%).

[...]

A Secular, Faith-Resistant Mindset
is More Common among Young Adults

generation current _____ages __ 1992 __ 2007
adult Mosaics ________ 18-22 __ -- _____ 19%
Busters _____________ 23-41 __ 16% ___ 14%
Boomers ____________ 42-60 __ 8% ____ 9%
Elders ______________61+ ____ 4% ____ 6%

[...]

They are less likely than active-faith Americans to be registered to vote (78% versus 89%), to volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit (20% versus 30%), to describe themselves as "active in the community" (41% versus 68%), and to personally help or serve a homeless or poor person (41% versus 61%). They are also more likely to be registered to vote as an independent or with a non-mainstream political party."

Barna.org June 11, 2007

More numbers in the article.

A lot of the numbers are as expected, but I was surprised about the voting difference. It can mean a disillusion with American politics, which is no surprise, considering the role that religion plays. This also corresponds with the fact that those who do vote are often voting for independents.
But remember: no vote, no change!

A thing that will no doubt look bad for the average American is that the non-faith group is less likely to spend money on charity while at the same time earn more. (Wonder how the stats would have looked if they accidentally phoned Bill Gates!) Considering the younger age, I think this may be an age/family thing. Even if charities for religious purposes are not counted (which dramatically decreased the gap), I think there's a fair chance that churches do collect money also for non-religious purposes, and that non-church goers therefore are not asked as much. Anyway, I don't live there, so I'll let others do the talking.
But just to have said it: in terms of foreign aid, European secular countries do a lot better than the US, so I don't accept the notion that without religion, no-one will care about other people. I've met too many non-believing bleeding heart liberals in my life to think otherwise. It's just that it's organized differently.

The New Secularism

""In 1984, 7.3 percent of respondents answered "none" when the General Social Survey asked what their religious preference was. Twenty years later, nearly twice as many, 14.3 percent, gave the same answer. Of course, the number of non-religious people will varies depending on how you ask the question. (For instance, the National Election Studies asks respondents whether religion plays an important part of their lives; in 2004, 23 percent said no.) But however you define them, no one doubts that their numbers are increasing."

[...]

The argument, in short, is that just as the elite-level secularization of the 1960s and '70s (in the intelligentsia, the Courts, and the Democratic Party) produced backlash in the form of the religious right, so now that backlash has bred its own backlash, in the form of a mass secularism whose attitudes toward religion, politics, and church-state separation are more European than anything we've seen before in American political life."

rossdouthat.theatlantic.com, 15 Jun 2007

Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are

"Members of Parliament, as well as the Pakistani government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offense to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

[...]

As a Muslim, you better believe I am offended – by these absurd reactions.
I am offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Quran.
Salam’s country ought to have celebrated him. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country. Parliament even declared him a “non-Muslim” because he belonged to a religious minority. His name continues to be controversial, invoked by state authorities in hushed tones."

Irshad Manji, Times Online, June 21, 2007

Commercial break: T-shirts!

I was creative this morning, and came up with this T-shirt design:

It's meant as a little twist on Ockham's razor. No points for saying that this encourages brainwashing though!
Oh, and I noticed they had an option for military T-shirts... and voila, I made this too:
Militant Atheist: No gods in my foxhole!

So, get shopping!

How multiculturalism is betraying women

"The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

[...]

But Judge Christa Datz-Winter followed the logic of multiculturalism instead. She said she would not grant an early divorce because - despite the police documentation of extreme violence and continued threats - there was no "unreasonable hardship" here.

Why? Because the woman, as a Muslim, should have "expected" it, the judge explained. She read out passages from the Koran to show that Muslim husbands have the "right to use corporal punishment". Look at Sura 4, verse 34, she said to Nishal, where the Koran says he can hammer you. That's your culture. Goodbye, and enjoy your beatings."

Johann Hari, The Independent, 30 April 2007

Updated with new link.
See also his archive against religion.

Physicians' Beliefs May Influence Their Perception Of The Effects Of Religion, Spirituality On Health

Physicians' observations and interpretations are strongly influenced by their religious beliefs, according to the authors. "Physicians with higher intrinsic religiosity are much more likely to (1) report that their patients bring up religion and spirituality issues, (2) believe that religion and spirituality strongly influences health and (3) interpret the influence of religion and spirituality in positive rather than negative ways."

Medical News Today, 15 Apr 2007

Big surprise!

"Ex-Muslim" group launches in Britain

""Ex-Muslims" hoping to change the terms of debate about Islam in Europe will launch a British group in London on Thursday.
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain will be the latest addition to groupings that began in Germany in February and spread to Scandinavia in May. A Dutch group will hold its launch in September."

Reuters, Jun 20, 2007

They are setting up a homepage at ex-muslim.org.uk. and there's also Maryam Namazie's blog and homepage.
Incidentally, her blog had a good speech on the use of veils. What's all the fuss about the veil?:

"Adult women may have the ‘right’ to veil though that right is in no way absolute as many rights aren’t and a completely different matter for children – which I will come to later. But having the right to do something is very different from defending the ‘freely chosen’ veil or the ‘right to veil’. There may be women who ‘freely choose’ to genitally mutilate their daughters or immolate themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre but that does not mean that we must then defend the right of women to do so or defend the practice of Suttee or FGM. The defence of rights is not about making everyone agree as you will always find people who will defend and commit the indefensible – and that is what religion is in my opinion. It is about protecting human beings sometimes even from themselves."

Why the bible is wrong about Pi

In several different passages of the bible, seemingly round objects are described with a single diameter of 10 units and a perimeter of 30 units. These quoted dimensions may strike the mathematically inclined reader as odd, since it has been known for millenia that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is the irrational number Pi, which is approximately 3.1415926535.

The UNM Humanist Society

Here's a sequence with a million digits.

How many species did Adam name?

""And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

[...]

So Adam must have identified and named millions of species on that fine afternoon in the garden of Eden. 350,000 species of beetles, 120,000 flies, 100,000 parasitic wasps, 20,000 nematodes. And he was just getting started."

Dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com 4/15/2007

It makes you wonder if the Bible really is true, doesn't it?

Conscience, Religion Alter How Doctors Tell Patients About Options

"Many physicians feel no obligation to tell patients about legal but morally controversial medical treatments or to refer patients to doctors who do not object to those treatments, report researchers from the University of Chicago in the New England Journal of Medicine.

[...]

This affects millions of people, the authors note. "If physicians' ideas translate into their practices, then 14% of patients - more than 40 million Americans - may be cared for by physicians who do not believe they are obligated to disclose information about medically available treatments they consider objectionable. In addition, 29% of patients - or nearly 100 million Americans - may be cared for by physicians who do not believe they have an obligation to refer the patient to another provider for such treatments.""

Medicalnewstoday.com 11 Feb 2007

Religious beliefs affect health in other words!

Goebbels on Atheism

"The European Crisis
[...]
Behind the Soviet leadership's pious phrases, we detect the grotesque face of Bolshevist atheism. It has not been liquidated, but rather it is only waiting to begin again its own work of liquidation, completing its work of extermination in the European states that it began with hundreds of thousands of priests in the Soviet Union. Only then, perhaps, will the Christian churches learn what combative enmity to religion really means.

Goebbels, Das Reich, 28 February 1943


"Make Way for Young Germany
[...]
No, the Marxist traitors were the ones who betrayed socialism, and the church was betrayed by those who claimed to defend Christianity but in reality made coalitions with God-denying atheists, thus destroying the foundations of national and Christian morality.
We have two Marxist parties for the workers. Are things going well for workers?
We have two Catholic parties. Has Catholicism been saved? No, the opposite is true. Ever since the Marxist parties in Germany began their fevered games, the workers have lost their jobs and their prosperity, and since the Christian-Catholic parties have joined with Marxism, God-denying atheism has gone about its work unhindered. These parties are the cause of the misery of the German people; the best thing for Germany is to kick this dead system's fat hacks in the rear."

Goebbels, speech 31 July 1932

"Communism with the Mask Off
In Germany we have religious controversies which arise from profound questions of conscience but have nothing whatsoever to do with a denial of religion. These controversies are exploited sometimes by harmless and sometimes malicious critics and a parallel is drawn between them and the absolutely dogmatic atheism of the Bolshevic International."

Goebbels, speech 13 September 1935.

Am I the only one who thinks the rhetoric of Goebbels sounds uncannily familiar to the run of the mill American evangelical?

Atheists: stand up and be counted

"I call upon atheists everywhere to stand up and be counted. Take pride in being rational. I'm a humanist and a Darwinist, but not all atheists are. There is a positive message in atheism, which is that it is a position of intellectual curiosity, and our children should not be subjected to the bullying negativity of faith schools towards the atheist. I live a full and moral life. It is untroubled by fear or deference of supernature, and I am proud of that."

Guardian, June 18, 2007

A Passion for Humanism

"Humanism will never make any progress with the American masses until it learns to combine reason and logic with emotion. Most people are moved by emotion. Note the effect of Black gospel music, rap, and rock and roll. Especially note the success of fundamentalist preachers. They have a language, a cadence, a system that rouses people's emotions through a pseudo-logic and it sinks in."

Humaniststudies.org, (Letters to the Editor) June 6, 2007

Probably true. I say this as a Black Metaller who knows the power of music. (Ooh, note the date above) Maybe not so much in creating someone's opinion, but fuelling it. Black Metal is of course Anti-Christian escapism, and not suitable for a positive message... but it works. Punk/hardcore also has a clear effect.
So if someone tried to use happier music for a more humanistic, positive message, I'm sure it would work. Now, let's just learn to play!

Ancient Atheism

"As the menace of the religious right has become increasingly clear, atheists have been increasingly driven to speak out in response and have become more visible. Viewing this trend, some commentators have erroneously concluded that atheism is a modern movement. But this is not so. Atheism is not a recent innovation. If we travel back into history, we can find clear evidence of atheists in many cultures and many eras, though their voices were sometimes more scattered and harder to discern.
In a thought-provoking post, Diganta of The New Horizon provides evidence by telling us about the atheist philosophies of ancient India:

"In Ancient Hinduism, there were a couple of schools who used to teach non-existence of God. The first one, Samkhya, used to believe in duality of existing things - as per the book, saamkhya kaarikaa. Prakriti (Nature) and Purusha (Consciousness) were thought to be the basic building blocks of everything.""

Daylightatheism.org, June 17, 2007

Woman in UK 'groomed' as bomber

The former wife of a British Islamist extremist has said her husband suggested she carry out a suicide bombing against the UK.

[...]

"He used to say we should all do jihad because he used to give an example of a woman who was a suicide bomber in India, who killed herself," she said in the interview.
"My husband told me I should join him to participate in jihad as well."
The woman told the programme her husband attempted to give her instructions in how to turn herself into a suicide bomber by concealing explosives under baggy, traditional, Islamic clothes.
"He would tell me how to use a [bomb] belt around the waist," she said. "Whenever he would discuss these matters I just would ignore him and go to the kitchen."
The woman said: "I told him I'm not interested at all. He was very clever. He told me how the girls tied the suicide belt around their waist and [wore] the hijab over the top.

BBC, 11 June 2007

So, the religious dress for muslim women can 1. cover their identity and 2. cover bombs.
How very convenient.

On a similar note:

"Netherlands: Demand to study veils in cars
The Party for Freedom wants a study about the "quickly rising number" is women driving with a veil. The veil considerably narrows the women's field of vision, and they notice cyclists and pedestrians too late when turning. Parliament member Barry Madlener wants Minister of Transportation Eurlings to study the dangers of a veil and burqa. "I have already heard from many people that they that almost been ran over by a woman with a veil."
Madlener says that veils often stick out a bit, and obstruct the view to the side. Moreover drivers wearing a veil hear less.
There are no rules for wearing a veil in traffic. The parliament member wants women to take off the veil in the car if it turns out that it's dangerous."

Nederlands Dagblad via Islamineurope.blogspot.com June 08, 2007

As the blogger laconically says: "And then people wonder why Saudi Arabia forbids women from driving."

Rise of the New Atheists

"A more general issue affects American surveys on religious beliefs, namely, the "social desirability effect," in which respondents are reluctant to give an unpopular answer in a society in which being religious is the norm. What happens when questions are framed to overcome this distortion? The FT/H poll tried to counteract it by allowing space not only for the customary "Not sure" but also for "Would prefer not to say" -- and 6 percent of Americans chose this as their answer to the question of whether they believed in God or a supreme being. Add to this those who declared themselves as atheists or agnostics and, lo and behold, the possible sum of unbelievers is nearly one in four Americans."

Ronald Aronson, The Nation, via Alternet June 16, 2007

The article deals with much more than statistics, and is well worth reading. See also: Are Nearly One-Fourth of Americans Non-Believers?

Poll Says Americans Looking for a Religious President

"According to the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, a nation-wide telephone survey of 958 Americans reveals what role religion may play in the 2008 elections.
Over half of all respondents with an opinion, 60.7%, believe a presidential candidate should be a religious person while 39.3% do not."

Yahoo, Jun 14 2007

More numbers in the press release

Should Science Speak to Faith?

"Two prominent defenders of science [Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins] exchange their views on how scientists ought to approach religion and its followers.

Scientific American, June 17, 2007

Most Kiwis against official religion

"More than half of New Zealanders are opposed to Christianity being the country's official religion, according to a poll.
Research New Zealand director Emanuel Kalafatelis said 58 per cent of the 501 people surveyed during the poll this month disagreed with recognising Christianity as the country's official religion.
"Just over a third (35 per cent) agreed with the idea of having Christianity officially recognised," Mr Kalafatelis said.

[...]

Men were more opposed to the idea of recognising Christianity than women, with 63 per cent of men disagreeing with it compared to 54 per cent of women.
Younger people were also much more likely to disagree with officially recognising Christianity than women.
"The research also showed that 66 per cent of those polled were in favour of making it compulsory for schools to teach about the different religions of the world," Mr Kalafatelis said."

Yahoo, AAP, June 17 2007

With (first and foremost) men and younger people on the opposing side, it also means it's the less religious who are opposed, not competing religions.
(Having said that: 501 people asked is exactly half of the number of people that should have been asked.)

Religious, but ignorant

"Prothero and others have found a shocking lack of knowledge about the religions to which Americans purport to belong, bested only by their ignorance of religions to which they don't belong.

Surveys say only half of America's adults can name any of the four Gospels. Most Americans can't name the first book of the Bible. Only a third know that Jesus (not Billy Graham) delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

Yet, writes Prothero: "World events have been shaped by Confucian ritual, Jewish law, Christian love and Buddhist compassion." In this country, Christianity, in particular, has migrated from doctrinal and narrative components to a focus on religious experience that doesn't appear to require a knowledge of the Scriptures.
"Being a Christian has become synonymous with having a born-again experience or opposing abortion and stem-cell research," he said. "American Christians focus on loving Jesus rather than learning what he taught.""

Baltimoresun.com, June 17, 2007

Religious and ignorant in other words!