Here's another obstacle to objectively evaluating a person. There are many aspects of people. If you are attracted to one aspect strongly, you might (subconsciously) allow that characteristic to serve as a token for that person's other personality characteristics. As this article from PsyBlog indicates, this is called the "Halo…
We all knew it, but the details are now pouring in. It's all so very reprehensible . . . This is an excerpt from today's Washington Post: In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and…
Free Press has posted this article, including a take-action link: In 2003, the Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, tried to push through a drastic media ownership deregulation package that would have transformed the American media ownership landscape. The proposal triggered one of the largest and broadest…
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is decorating Madison, Wisconsin with "Beware of Dogma" billboards this month. What is the FFRF? The following mission statement is from the FFRF website: The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.…
People have all kinds of hobbies. Some people like to knit. Other people like to collect stamps. I like to go to church while playing the role of “anthropologist.”
When I am thinking about visiting a church, my biggest decision is deciding what church to visit. That was my decision three days ago. I had already been to a stern and humorless evangelical church. The thing I remembered about that church was the scriptural quotation featured on the T-shirts of hundreds of the people attending: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” It was a quote from Proverbs 1:7. I remember thinking “Of all the quotes they could’ve chosen from the Bible, this one is strange indeed. Any good teacher knows that the best students are driven by natural curiosity and a good dose of skepticism, not by fear.”
Back to my task of choosing a church. Last week, I just happened to be in the car listening to a fundamentalist A.M. radio station when I heard neocon talk show host Paul McGuire ranting about a new crop of churches designed for young people, churches that allegedly don’t spend enough time on the Bible but, instead, cater to the social needs of the congregation. Maguire’s rant went on for several minutes, long enough for me to conclude that I simply had to go to one of these new hip churches to see for myself.
As it turns out, one of those new “emerging” churches is located about …
