This Chris Kelly headline says it all: America: #1 in Bibles. #37 in Infant Mortality. Here's an excerpt from Kelly's Huffpo article: Europeans are feeling pretty smug lately, with their sturdy currency, "health care," and rising rates of life expectancy, but there's one area where we kick their ass: American…
Imagine that a neighbor walks up today and tells you that he really cares about you. In fact, he loves you like a daughter/son and he wants to show his love. You might be delighted to hear such an expression of affection.
Then imagine that he tells you that he wants to prove to you that he cares for you. He wants to prove it in a way that you will never doubt the depth of his caring.
You would probably be thinking that he’s going to do something nice. Maybe he will give a big donation to charity in your name. Or maybe he will go buy you something nice, or take you to dinner at a good restaurant. But then he surprises you.
He reminds you that he has an adult son named Bill (which you knew, because you know Bill). He then tells you that he is going to let a mob of goons torture and murder Bill in a bloody spectacle, for you!
You are aghast, but he continues on.
He tells you that he is going to let that mob drive large nails through Bill’s hands and feet, for you, to prove that he cares about you. For a grand finale, he is going to allow this sadistic crowd to jab a spear through Bill’s side, to make sure that every drop of blood has been drained from Bill’s body.
It would be patently obvious to you that decent people don’t “show their love” by …
At the supermarket last week, I picked up a copy of the Sun. Actually, I think the full title of the newspaper is Sun: God Bless America, based upon the front cover. I was intrigued by the front page headline: “Seven Miracle Prophecies That Will Come True on Easter Sunday.” I wondered what those prophecies were, and now I’m going to share them with you so you don’t have to spend your hard earned money on the Sun: God Bless America.
It’s going to be quite a day this Easter Sunday, that’s for sure. Based on reading the lead article in the Sun: God Bless America, I now know that the following things will be happening on March 23, 2008:
It's not so much that beliefs clash, but that the basis for believing clashes between those who embrace extradinary religious claims and those who don't. Over at Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse illustrates this topic well, asking why the extraordinary events of the Bible, many of them allegedly witnessed by thousands, fell…
Such good irony.
I can’t help but shake my head at the many Christians who are temporarily putting on their Skeptic Hats to deal with a bold claim by a Discovery Channel documentary. That documentary is claiming that a tomb discovered in Israel in 1980 held the bones of Jesus. If true, the documentary’s claim would conflict with the alleged resurrection of Jesus.
[Note: there is controversy about the resurrection, based upon the original writings from the Gospel according to Mark]
Ebonmuse, an atheist, has pointed out many reasons to doubt the claims of the television documentary that the tomb discovered in 1980 was the tomb of Jesus. He concludes:
I believe the most likely scenario is that this is a genuine tomb from biblical times, containing several ordinary people with names common from the time, which has been hyped beyond what the evidence supports by overzealous filmmakers trying to create a sensation. It is not a magic bullet to destroy Christianity . . .
Based upon the points raised in his article, I agree Ebonmuse. For those same reasons, I agree with the many Christians who are now attacking the Discovery Channel documentary. There are, indeed, many good reasons to doubt these claims. It’s fun to engage in skeptical inquiry, marching side-by-side with devout Christian believers for a change!
No sooner are they finished criticizing the claim about the tomb of Jesus, though, you can hear many of these same believers asserting, as undeniable facts, all of those ancient …