Category Archives: Religion

American Christianity and Conservatism

Posted on Monday 28 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Andrew Sullivan strikes at Sarah Palin’s glib, despicable remark that “Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists” — to which her audience cheered — with this post: Sarah Palin: Anti-Christian It reveals that vast swathes of American Christianity are objectively anti-Christian, … Continue reading →

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Bunnies, Eggs, Spring

Posted on Sunday 20 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Everyone’s posting about Easter today, so I’ll acknowledge two or three of those posts, that capture better than I have time to do myself why I find the whole Easter tradition fascinating as a cultural development, but implausible and uninteresting … Continue reading →

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Interesting Links This Weekend

Posted on Sunday 13 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There’s *another* great science show running [in addition to “Cosmos”], “Your Inner Fish”, based on the book by Neil Shubin, which explores the physiological resemblances among animals, from fishies to humans, that are of course one of the many lines … Continue reading →

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The Need to Feel Special

Posted on Wednesday 9 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

The scientific kerfuffle of the past couple days has been about a documentary supporting geocentrism (as if the creationists are not crazy enough), the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe, immovable, and that the sun and … Continue reading →

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Creation Myths

Posted on Thursday 3 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

The TV series Cosmos has gotten some flack from Christian conservatives who think their creationist ideas are being dissed. In a science show! This article at AlterNet details the many creation myths that Cosmos is not covering. The critics complaining … Continue reading →

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Creationists and Flat-Earthers

Posted on Thursday 3 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

If you are a Creationist because Bible, you should also be a Flat-Earther, according to the citations in this article. Creationists endure rough few weeks: Why the flat-earth crowd is in trouble It’s remarkable enough that most of today’s creationists, … Continue reading →

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Gopnik on legitimate forms of knowledge and increasing prosperity

Posted on Wednesday 2 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

In another article in the same issue of The New Yorker, Alan Gopnik reviews several books that provide both histories of atheism and apologetics of religion. What’s notable about the essay is that Gopnik doesn’t seem to have a horse … Continue reading →

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Noah and the Advance of Civilization

Posted on Tuesday 1 April 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I haven’t seen Noah and am not particularly inclined to, but I was struck by an essay by David Plotz in Slate, Noah’s Environmental Views Are a Disaster. In the film’s worldview, according to Plotz, the corruption mankind brings across … Continue reading →

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Eternal Verities, Not

Posted on Tuesday 25 March 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Fascinating piece about how evangelical attitudes about abortion have changed dramatically since the 1960s, when Biblical passages were cited to deny that fetuses had souls and therefore abortions weren’t so bad. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/hobby_lobby_and_contraception_how_conservative_evangelicals_went_from_not.html What changed? Politics, the article explains, to the … Continue reading →

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Cosmos and Creationism

Posted on Tuesday 25 March 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A writer at Think Progress says that Cosmos is, indirectly, giving a lot of time to creationist ideas, despite the creationist critics demanding equal time (for nonsense vs sense, apparently). http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/03/25/3418425/creationism-is-getting-a-lot-of-time-on-cosmos/ By discussing standard creationist arguments about the impossible perfectibility … Continue reading →

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