Britain’s advertising authority bans pregnant nun ice cream ad.

An ice cream ad has been banned by Britain's advertising watchdog, apparently out of fear that it will offend those people who believe that it is possible to get pregnant without having sex. Actually, the "strapline" of the ad uses the phrase "immaculately conceived," which is interesting. In my experience, most Catholics will tell you with some certainty that the "Immaculate Conception" refers to the "fact" that Mary gave birth to Jesus even though she never had sex with a man. I challenge you to try this out on Catholics. At least 3 out of 4 will say this, but it is fundamentally incorrect. The "Immaculate Conception" refers to the claim that Mary herself was born without original sin. The writers of the ad got it wrong too, though maybe they did so purposely, knowing that so many Catholics get it wrong. And a new Pew survey shows that devout believers notoriously get the basic facts of their faith wrong (and see this DI post). This is phenomenal, given that so many believers claim that their faith is quite important to them.

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Priorities

I spotted this quote by Tom Friedman on Daily Dish:

China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience...; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry... Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan.
The story doesn't end with this helpful and insightful quote. Perhaps, the above quote is an attempt by Friedman to attempt to redeem himself for his pro-war rhetoric from prior years. He has himself to thank for the fact that the U.S. warmongering mentality has caused us to fall so far behind China. And we continue to fall behind China because we can't wake up from our nightmare in which relatively few people armed with unsophisticated weapons such as box-cutters are deemed more dangerous than the Soviet Union at its height, armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. Thus, we will continue to spend more than half of our federal tax revenue on military pursuits. Our exuberant and delusional warmongering is killing our economy and our future.

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Paraprosdokians, anyone?

I hadn't heard of the term "paraprosdokians" until I visited englishforums.com. The definition: "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to re-frame or re-interpret the first part." Englishforums.com offers 30 paraprosdokians, including these:

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong. Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America ? You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

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Tolerance of Religion Scale

In The God Delusion (at page 50), Richard Dawkins presented the following spectrum of theistic probability:

1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.' 2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.' 3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.' 4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.' 5. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.' 6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.' 7. Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.' Incidentally, Dawkins placed himself at a “6″ on his 7-point scale. See also here.
This above scale is quite useful. How sure are you that there is no “God”? Now you can rank your own confidence level based on a scale that quantifies your beliefs; you can then compare your degree of beliefs to that of others. [More . . . ]

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Bill Maher scolds whiney rich people

Bill Maher has scolded the rich who feel that they are being picked on by Barack Obama:

New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole. And let's be clear: that's 3.6% only on income above 250 grand -- your first 250, that's still on the house.

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