religion

Percentage of Americans who identified themseves as 'church members': 1776: 17% 1990: 62% The statistics for Britain now (10%) and at the height of Empire (possibly 70%), are similar. It is possible that Christianity in America today is a form of nationalism rather than spiritualism, rather like Victorian Britain. Exclusive Graphs

Jonathan Miller's: A Brief History of Disbelief Pt. 1 "God is an essence we know nothing of, until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world." John Adams US President 1797 - 1801 "The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes - and they believe rightly." Thomas Jefferson US President 1801 - 1809 "I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion." James Buchanan US President 1857 - 1861 "My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years." Abraham Lincoln US President 1861 - 1865

One Nation under God, upholding democracy and the principals of the Ten Commandments? - Actually no, America was founded on the opposite, and was all the better for it. Which country has a constitution which declares 'one nation under God', America or Iran? Iran Were the majority of the people on the Mayflower fleeing religious persecution? No. (Most people who fled to America were fleeing persecution FROM religious people. By 1776 America was a secular as modern Europe, while Europe was as religious as current day America.) Does American law contradict the Ten Commandments? Yes, capitalism is based upon the idea that coveting things is not that bad after all. Did the American Constitution mention God? No Is the American Constitution based upon purely democratic principles (i.e. majority rule)? No, it specifically protects minorities from majority voted laws which persecute. Is America a Christian Nation?

Would capsules of pig fat in plane seats deter an Islamic Fundamentalist suicide bomber? Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Pershing the Thought) The logic of an irrational deterrent, such as pig fat, which is really an imaginary weapon unless god is a nasty piece of work himself, seems at first glance to be less of a moral dilemma to me than other inevitable anti-muslim stereotyping and encroachment on civil liberty that a less stable society brings with it. However, I suspect that, because religious beliefs are irrational, they are actually based often on subconscious convenience. In other words, if being covered in pig fat prevented you from being a martyr, the belief system of people who conveniently distort the very nature of a loving god by killing in his name would evolve around this inconvenient fact and it would only be a deterrent against the majority of moderate...

According to the results of this 14,000 person study about how much all of the various Abrahamic sects hate each other in various parts of the world, there is a little reported fact due to the focus on Muslim vs Christian relations. 86% of French view Jews favorably (almost exactly the same number as view Christians favorably: 87%) much more than in the US, UK or, in particular, Spain which would appear to be the place to look objectively for signs of the fastest growing anti-semitism. There is also less difference in absolute percentage terms between how favorably people view Jews vs Christians in Germany than in the US. Not what squarely unbalanced Fox News would have us believe. Survey highlights Islam-West rift

'The Da Vinci Code': Is it worthy? "Experts can't figure out how Dan Brown's so-so writing has produced such a blockbuster." The success of the Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with the writing, but the fact that it is a mutation of a very successful and ancient meme. There is another book that is inexplicably successful, depite being an incoherent mishmash of styles, often not that well written and full of plot inconsistencies and contradictions - the Bible. Of all the possible stories that resonate with the human mind, the Bible does so very successfully, giving the appearance of its success being testament to its truth, something that is obviously very helpful for a book based on teleological argument. To suggest that the Bible is the truth because it is so successful, however, is the result of looking the wrong way down the funnel of time. The fact...

On the subway yesterday there was a guy preaching love in the name of Jesus, at the top of his voice. He seemed pretty angry - but he was preaching 'gods love' so I guess that was supposed to be OK. Then he started talking about what should happen if a woman were to lie down with another woman etc. (i.e. encouraging people to murder gays) as it says in the nasty, brutish book that people call the holy bible. I don't tolerate this kind of aggressive religious intolerance - so I told him to shut up. This made things very uncomfortable, nearly everyone in the carriage now looked at me as the devil incarnate and rallied in support of the preacher - saying amen after everything he said. If I mentioned that it was in Harlem and on a Sunday, and that therefore the whitey in a very religious...

When I got home this evening, my wife was all happy because she had made a CD for a work colleague's parents. They had to be conferenced in on a call so they could play a sample to find out who a song was by, they liked it so much. Whereas I had been writing the misanthropic anti-religious rant below. Sometimes I am such a miserable git. So I've put a strike through the post - and am listening to the CD, and its making me happy. When others do stupid things in computing people say RTFM - read the fucking manual. For some people the bible is their manual but they clearly haven't read it. CNN has a piece on mutual funds run by religious extremists which pose as 'socially conscious investing' a phenomenon which originated with anti-Apartheid groups. These funds, such as the Timothy Plan, have strange priorities....

More evidence that religion in America is a potentially dangerous disease: "Today's atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society" "From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in

"Haderer published a 40-page book titled, The Life of Jesus. The book contained a cartoon of Jesus, depicting him as ...a binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis. Unbeknownst to him, the book was published in Greece. He found out when he received a summons to appear in court in Athens in January, having been charged with blasphemy." Of course there is absolutely no resemblance between Jesus and a pot smoking hippy. Cartoonist Faces Jail in Greece Over Jesus Cartoon - TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime

There is a difference between blasphemy and the worship of false prophets. Islam fobids images of Muhammad, lest the images themselves become icons, taking away from the real person or idea. The religion supports iconoclasm by definition. A cartoon is designed to be just that, an iconoclastic image, so it is hardly likely to encourage worship of false prophets. The cartoon issue is blasphemy enhanced by a general taboo of figurative images. A similar kind of taboo, for example, would mean that if you were brought up in a 'Judeo-Christian' environment the idea of a manual depicting someone like Moses or Jesus performing various sex acts, which would be acceptable in less prudish Asian religions, would shock you. In fact it may even make reading the above statement slightly irritate you. I suspect that the irritation that is felt by people who inherit the Muslim meme is the same but...