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 …
Tag: heresies & pharisees
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 …