Readers at LJ: click here to check out this post which has been gobbled up by the horrible Moloch that lives somewhere in Livejournal’s API. Yeah, I gotta say, after having been around some Tibetans in Northern India, and hearing their stories first hand… I am so not into the Tibetan Buddhist theocracy, and think they probably were living off the slave-like labour of the Tibetan people, just like China’s official party line claims. But colonial occupation and genocide isn’t really much in the way of help for the Tibetan people, regardless of what the Chinese official party line claims. …
Tag: heresies & pharisees
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
I rarely inhale books, but today was one of those days. I whipped through this book, disillusioned — who’d have thought I could be more disillusioned than I had been? — yet not really surprised. Doubtless, some interpreted this text as an attack on Mother Teresa, but if you read it carefully, it’s much more an attack on the media — conservative and liberal alike — that, during the woman’s life, glossed over major issues in her work and beliefs, issues that the majority of human beings would probably take issue with if presented directly, and beatified Mother Teresa in …
Stuff From This Week
UPDATE: This post has finally been reconstructed. Enjoy! UPDATE: Somewhere from a third to half of this post disappeared. I’ll rewrite that soon. But not today, as I’m (dramatic flourish) feeling ill! It’s been a busy lazy week. Since there’s nothing new in Gordland, I thought I’d just dump some links. I don’t do this often, but since I’ve just been catching up and surfing around (aside from a rewrite I’m working on) I have lots of stuff to share. I’ll subdivide it all by headings. One more thing: for the LJ readers out there, there are some Youtube videos …
The Past Week, and Praise for Pat Condell
It’s been a whirlwind week, meeting people from the textbook gig I had this year for a dinner party (complete with karaoke and a stop at a wine bar), frantic syllabus-drafting and a meeting with fellow teachers to discuss the new Listening & Speaking Course guidelines, followed by Indian food and beer, an end-of-semester lunch meeting with my department, where we wished the department head a good year off on sabbatical in San Francisco, followed by a meeting with Charles and Jeffery at Carne Station, and lots of meat and drink. Last night, Lime and I went on a futile …
Teacher Fired for Sane Comment About Biblical Literalism… But…
Link found somewhere: A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday. “I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have …
A Sticky Question
UPDATE: The video is back online, but embedding is now disallowed, by the author’s request. Too bad. But you can go see it here. Original Post: They want to make abortion illegal. Sooooo, then… what should the punishment be, of thoughtful and long-devoted Christians? (For those reading this on LJ, the video won’t embed, so here’s a link. Except, ha, someone put a copyright claim on it. Yeah, RIGHT.Makes me wish I’d downloaded it so I could upload it again somewhere, a few times. Anyway, here’s an article on the same issue, and hopefully the copyright claim gets resolved, or …
Who’s More Embarrassing, Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins?
Over at Goth House Comics you’ll find a “a really long essay about the nature of religion” which I think merits some attention, though I disagree with parts of it. It was, apparently, written in response to this interview with the wonderful, terrible, fascinating Richard Dawkins, whose latest book, The God Delusion, is on my to-read list though, with the number of books I brought back from Canada, it may be quite a while until I actually read it. (And, I should add, Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels is on the very same reading list.) The post reminded me of …
Rhythm method criticised as a killer of embryos
A link from this mailing list I’m sort of on, in one of the few threads I’ve been reading: a scientist criticises the rhythm method as a killer of embryos. Essentially, he’s saying that the incidence of intercourse at the fringes of the fertile period causes conception of far more embryos that can’t survive, and therefore that many more embryos are conceived and then die by this very calculated means than by other forms of contraception. Interestingly, he reports that Roman Catholics have statistically higher rates of miscarriage, at least according to one study — but of course, this is …
Why not indeed?
Katolik Shinja asks why the Church doesn’t just go ahead and excommunicate all Pro-Abortionists from its ranks like it did with Segregationists. Here’s my thinking: My suspicion is that the population of the North American and European Church — or pretty much the Church in any developed country — would diminish to a small portion of its current size. I suspect that’s why this would never happen. Of course, that, and the fact that Segregationism was a social practice, thus more easily detected and repudiated; abortion, as a medical procedure, is performed in isolation, and is not so easily detectable. …
St Paul as a Duped Henchman of Satan?
… [these] are things which Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about that. — Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XV It’s always struck me as odd that mainstream people–religious or otherwise–laugh at the antics of street preachers, but take the conversions of the members of the early Church seriously. Take Paul, for instance. The guy hunted Christians, till …