Defaithed

This came via an email making the forwarding rounds; I don't know the original source. Might not even be new.

The text:

Religion is like a penis.

It's fine to have one. 

It's fine to be proud of it. 

But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around. 

And PLEASE don't try to shove it down my children's throats. 

Well. That certainly is some rather direct imagery. But I sure can't argue with the sentiment!

(Ooh, here's an ugly thought. Since I used to be a proselytizing, door-knocking Christian, it's like I was offering my penis door to door. Now I feel insulted that I had so few takers. : )

And the world keeps on having fun with the Rapture that wasn't.

Harold Camping's flock can rest assured: even if they've given away all their material goods, they can shovel semi-meat into burrito wraps to earn money again. Just enough to tide them over until October 21.

The photo was found here, but anyone know where this sign exists in the real world? My hat's off to the restaurant manager. 

From a card mailed to PostSecret:

I fear those left behind after the rapture will believe it was an alien abduction... instead of God taking His children home to Heaven.

How interesting, Believer. I fear that you're looking for a magic man in the sky where there is none.

And I fear that you're not going to honestly admit that your Rapture just ain't happening. 

Take old clothes and shoes; leave empty "clothes people" lying around town on May 21.

I can haz Rapture! 

(Via Eat Liver; original source unknown. See Prediction Watch for the May 21 Rapture warning.)

In an AP story about bin Laden's email habits, a commenter named Jeremy adds:

Dear Westboro Baptist Church:

We have a funeral for you to protest. It's somewhere in the middle of the northern Arabian Sea. We would be more than happy to help you pack, fly you there, and drop you off.

Sincerely,

America

Amen!

Although I love my fantastic fiction as well as the next geek, I'm not that well-versed in the swords-and-sorcery fantasy genre. Other than Tolkien, my experience with fantasy series consists of all 13 (to date) books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and, just recently, the first book of George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

As the latter gains huge exposure through its jump to TV, PZ Myers reports that he's read all of the series published to date, and – minor spoiler here – found them ultimately frustrating in that by the end of the fourth book, nothing much has happened in the big picture. Martin's major plot lines stay where they are, treading water.

Anyone who's read Jordan's mega-series knows exactly how that feels. I count myself a Wheel fan and am glad to have gone through the whole series, even during its long slow stretches... but that said, here's my nutshell summary of Wheel of Time:

Book 1: "OMG! The Last Battle (tm) is coming any day now!"

(...many books follow...)

Book 13: "OMG! The Last Battle (tm) is coming any day now!"

It's truly sad that Jordan himself didn't live long enough to find out exactly how his series ends (the final books are in the hands of cleanup writer Brandon Sanderson, armed with Jordan's notes). Let's hope that Martin has a plan that'll let both him and his readers enjoy a wrap-up to A Song of Ice and Fire while the author is hale and hearty.

Anyway, what's all that got to do with religion? Just this: My Wheel of Time summary above reminded me an awful lot of something else. Whatever could it be? Oh yes, my Jehovah's Witness upbringing. By way of comparison, here's how the JWs' series runs:

1914: "OMG! Armageddon is coming any day now!"

(...many, many years follow...)

2011: "OMG! Armageddon is coming any day now!"

Eerily similar to Wheel of Time – except there's no end-of-series capper drawn up, by anybody. This one plans to go on forever, with several million "readers" still buying its Neverending Story about a Return of the King to vanquish the Lord of Chaos and leave a Feast for Crows at the site of The Last Battle.

Now that's what I call high fantasy!

Martin Rees, master of Trinity College in Cambridge, UK Astronomer Royal, non-theist (but cultural Christian), and recent winner of the £1 million Templeton Prize, told the Guardian:

Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science.

PZ Myers takes Rees to task, as he has the Templeton Prize itself many times, for intentionally blurring the lines between fact-based science and faith-based supernatural beliefs. PZ's writings on such accommodation of religion are voluminous and insightful; I can add nothing here on that topic.

Rather, I'll poke at one bit that PZ left unpoked:

If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable...

Ahem. Mr Rees, it's not teachers who take that "uncompromising line". It's religious people that do. 

Scientists and science teachers present evolution as the explanation for life's variety that best fits our observations of nature. There's no mention of God in the theory of evolution, one way or the other; it's not a theory of, or about, God. (Or gods, for that matter. Or ghosts, or demons, or unicorns, or leprechauns. It has nothing to say about any of these.)

Any dispute, clash, or claim of "irreconcilable" is brought up, in its entirety, by religious followers: "Wait! We already have our own supernatural explanation for life's variety!" Fine; the believers are free to think as they like. But let's be very clear on one point: The scientists and teachers are only relating the facts and the theory that fit observations, which is exactly what they should do. Any claim of theological disagreement is the business, and problem, of the believers making the claim. Don't blame the science teachers! 

Isn't Rees aware that hundreds of millions of religious believers do accept the theory of evolution (at least in general terms)? To no one's surprise, we have these believers saying "sure, our God's compatible with evolution", and those believers saying "no, our God's not compatible with evolution" – which means we have a theological debate, of the same sort as arguments over Trinities and true prophets and transubstantiation and how many angels can dance on a pinhead. Don't blame the science teachers for interfaith religious disputes!

The same applies to Rees' further comment:

We should all oppose – as Darwin did – views manifestly in conflict with the evidence, such as creationism … But we shouldn't set up this debate as 'religion v science'...

Setting aside the problem that those are two rather contradictory exhortations, I have to note: "We" (the non-theists) aren't setting up a "religion vs science" debate. "We" just lay out the facts as revealed by observation and experiment. It's the believers who cry fowl at random junctures and set up a "religion vs science" debate. Not us.

Stop blaming the teachers!

The Vatican's Father Gabriele Amorth thinks The Exorcist faithfully represents his job as the Pope's right-hand dispeller of demons (both the serpent kind and the scorpion kind!). In the US, where an astounding 40% of the population is said to firmly believe in angels and devils, Father Gary Thomas would steer you to The Rite to learn more of his 9-to-5. 

Both men are exorcists, a surprising number of which still ply the medieval trade of casting out evil spirits. Both are convinced that demons are real, that possession is real, and that the need for an army of exorcists is both real and growing (even extending to appeals for holy help from non-Catholics, says Thomas). And both share interesting (as in, can't-look-away bizarre) revelations of the workings of their craft: types and symptoms of possession, steps employed in the de-spiriting, and the importance of distinguishing genuine possession from mental illness.

Ahem. About that last item... If, in fact, demons aren't real, then just what are these men doing when they engage in their "healing ministry", as Thomas describes his hour-or-two bouts of Satanic battle? If there is no real possession, then aren't exorcists peddling witch-doctor hocus-pocus of the most gullible sort? Aren't they putting on a show that's indescribably silly? 

Much worse, says Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast. Their actions are criminal. 

Brian's excellent Skeptoid episodes do their darnedest to carefully weigh claims of the bizarre and supernatural, based on even-handed examination of evidence. But in the episode The Exorcism of Anneliese, Brian wastes no words in slamming the medieval idiocy of exorcism and its tragic effects on people needing actual medical care for mental disorders. 

Today doctors can look at cases like Anneliese, and though we cannot make a reliable diagnosis without an examination, it seems clear that she suffered from a variety of conditions including dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder)... 

Thus, the Catholic exorcism rite remains contemptuous of basic ethics and any pretense of considering the patient's welfare to be important...

Hundreds of professional exorcists walk among us, today, seeking critically ill psychiatric patients upon whom they can shout charms and sprinkle water. Many of these cases recount shocking tortures. Drownings, crucifixions, burnings, stabbings, all in the name of exorcism, and most to innocent children or the mentally ill.

Brian also points an accusing finger at the Hollywoodization of exorcism, and our own complicity in anointing a new canonical film monster to keep us entertained for a couple of hours at a time.

Filmmakers have exploited these victims to make not just The Exorcist, but a slew of other copycat films based on specific individuals, including Anneliese. Every time Linda Blair's head spun around, or she spat green vomit, we laughed and had a riotous old time at the theater. Would the same movies have been made exploiting the victims of other true-life crimes, and would we have laughed at the depictions of those actual victims in their dramatized death throes? 

Yikes. That one strikes a bit close to home; there is a certain attraction to the movie depiction of holy action-hero priests battling invisible monsters, even for those of us who find the supernatural bit pure fiction. It's fun until someone more thoughtful reminds us that, away from the big screen and the popcorn, real people are being hurt:

Exorcism is a brutal, heinous, medieval torture ritual justified only by ignorance. Its roots as a religious rite are irrelevant; a crime is still a crime.

Amen. Let's do what we can to banish exorcisms (and all harmful juju) to the realm of escapist fiction only. Thanks for the wake-up call, Brian.

PS: If you're not a subscriber to Skeptoid, remedy that now!

Miscellaneous funny bits:

Moon = God

One of the best recent laughs: Bill O'Reilly tells us that tides are proof of God. Enjoy.

Virgin Mary Statue Crying For No Good Reason

From The Onion:

"There must be thousands of Marys in the Greater Boston area, but ours is the only one who can't hold it together... The real miracle would be if Old Faithful over here would turn off the waterworks for five seconds."

That explains it

Sorry; I lost the source of this one.

Koodle

After revealing to the Internet the multi-layered Koodle of the Korean Thermo Mat Clay Mat / Bed with its hucleus external rays (just the thing when "the weather is groovy"!), I still rank only about #16 on a Google search for Koodle.

Tides be damned; clearly, there is no God.

Unidentified Suspended Objects

Not a religion item, but a telling look at "I know it's true, because I saw it!" A postcard sent in to PostSecret: 

The Intertubes as a whole have been laughing at Bill O'Reilly's naming of the tides as "proof" of a magic man in the sky. Responding to the claim by David Silverman, President of American Atheists, that all religions are a scam, O'Reilly tells us how he knows they're not: 

"Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that."

Full video of the interview:

It seems that O'Reilly drops the tide bomb often, even roping that big shiny daytime ball-thing into his theology:

"Sun goes up, sun goes down."

Not surprisingly, comics everywhere aren't going to let that tide just come and go without remark. Stephen Colbert offers the video compilation of the universe a la O'Reilly:

(Colbert's summary of O'Reilly's theology: "There must be a God, because I don't know how things work.")

Well. Everyone's already done his or her best to let O'Reilly in on the secret behind the tides. Here are a few more things I think he should know:

1. The sun doesn't actually "go up" or "go down". Which is not a knock against O'Reilly; those are the colloquial terms for how we view things from the ground, and I suspect that even Bill knows that the Earth revolves. But:
2. The sun does indeed go up and down with impressive, clock-like regularity. That's because an object in motion (including revolution) continues to do so, unchanged, unless affected by an external force. In other words, the regular rising and setting of the sun is what must happen in the absence of a miracle-working God.
3. Thus, if the sun and the tides didn't move with predictable regularity, that would be a sign of possible divine power. (Thanks, Bill, for helping argue for the lack of a God!)
4. Once again, O'Reilly is right when he claims that the sun behaves with awesome regularity. And that's why, when we hear an ancient claim that the sun stopped for a day so Joshua could kill more people, we know it's a myth.
5. Getting back to real phenomena of nature, here are a few more occurrences for O'Reilly to ponder: Earthquake comes, children die. Volcano erupts, children die. Drought sets in, children die. Too much rain falls, children die. Plague breaks out, children die. Explain those, Bill.

Speaking of children, let me note in closing that the babes – or at least, those that survive the grotesque "miscommunications" of O'Reilly's God – are the very ones who hold The Book that may help explain the tides mystery to Bill:

(Should be a required science text at Fox News. They could call back David Silverman, or any egg-head liberal, to help with the big words.)