Noah, FEMA, Media, Resignation

At first, I scoffed at this ABC News headline: “Has Noah’s Ark Been Found? Christian Archaeology Team Believes It’s Found Biblical Remains?” 

According to this recent story,

Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah’s Ark in Iran’s Elburz mountain range.  “I can’t imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark,” said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.

The Bible also describes the Ark’s dimensions as being 300 cubits by 50 cubits — about the size of a small aircraft carrier. The B.A.S.E. Institute’s discovery is similar in size and scale.

The story indicates that the B.A.S.E. Institute’s samples “are being examined at labs in Texas and Florida.”   The story doesn’t mention whether the sample will be analyzed using secular methods or Bible methods. Choice of methodology might matter, though. According to the official website of BASE, here is the methodology used by BASE:

The BASE Institute employs a methodology that seeks to apply the best practices of many disciplines, while giving absolute priority to the Bible itself. While we do not discount the opinions of scholars, we do not place undue emphasis on them.

Here are the highlights of the BASE “methodology:

  • We recognize the weakness of a “Premise + Proof” methodology.
  • We recognize the strength of a “Possibilities + Problems” methodology.
  • We recognize that the Bible is fully inspired (superintended by God) in its autographs (original
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Special proms for prepubescent fundamentalist girls

In "What is Conservative Culture?" (July 3, 2006 issue of The New Republic), Rick Perlstein reports that a new kind of prom has spung up in some fundamentalist communities.  It's not for high school seniors but for prepubescent girls. They dress up in party dresses and take their fathers as…

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Theists don’t all believe “in the same God”: A demonstration.

It’s time to dispel the notion that theists all believe “in the same God.” Based on my experience, they don’t all believe in the same God.  Yes, they use the same label, “God,” but that label hides the numerous striking and intense disagreements believers have with each other.

From now on, when anyone claims that all believers believe in the same God, I’m going to ask that person to answer this handy list of twenty questions with regard to their God:

  1. Is your God a man or a woman (or something like an XXY or XYY?
  2. Does your God have a son named Jesus?
  3. Is your God a sentient caring being or just a first cause?
  4. Did your God inspire the writings of the Bible?
  5. Does your God deem the Catholic Church the only legitimate church?
  6. Does your God hold that non-believers are unfit for public office?
  7. Did your God provide for an afterlife, a heaven and a hell?
  8. Does your God speak English?
  9. Does your God send gay people to hell
  10. Does your God prefer the Red Sox or the Yankees (or some other team)?
  11. Did your God rig nature to evolve new species without further intervention by Him?
  12. Was your God offended when He saw Janet Jackson’s nipple on TV?
  13. Does your God literally require that any person doing any work on the Sabbath “shall be put to death”? [See Exodus 35:2]
  14. Did your God want Terri Schiavo kept on life support?
  15. Does your God consider an un-implanted
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Christian Spirit, Sharon & Robertson, and Knowing Nothing About History

This happened some time ago, but it’s taken me a while to “process” it and come up with a cogent observation.  Sometimes, certain things are just too unbelievable to take.  But this is by no means the first, nor shall it be the last, time someone from the frothing-at-the-mouth christian right has said something which leaves most reasonable (and reasoning) people flatfooted.

Partly, this is about not knowing history, which is something all of us could do with a little more intimate acquaintance. 

The right Reverand Pat Robertson, who spews forth on the 700 Club–a televised ministry previously notable for bad hair, excessive eye makeup, and monetary and sexual hypocrisy that ran off the scales–let the public know what he thought was behind Ariel Sharon’s massive cerebral hemhorrage. Seems God did it.

If there is a more ideologically corrupt pundit currently mouthing off, I am unaware of him or her. Mona Charen might qualify, except her observations are so fecklessly ill-formed that she poses no serious challenge to reason, and Ann Coulter seems to have turned purely to a Limbaugh-esque “don’t confuse me with the facts, my numbers are more important than truth” kind of screeding moronity.

According to Robertson, God struck Sharon down because he was about to give God’s land to the Palestinians. He said:

“God considers this land to be his…You read the Bible and he says, ‘This is my land,’ and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up …

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She can’t have the job because … she’s a girl.

A woman was recently elected as the first Episcopal presiding bishop and it's causing quite a ruckus.  As reported by MSNBC, The situation has been complicated by Sunday’s election of Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first Episcopal presiding bishop — the first woman ever to lead an Anglican…

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