The Immoral Minority: "Religion is really made by the brain. It is a sec...

The Immoral Minority: "Religion is really made by the brain. It is a sec...: Lionel Tiger is a Canadian-born, American-based anthropologist. He is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University a...

This article was on the Huffington Post today.   Couldn't have said it better myself.

STANFORD, Calif. (RNS) An atheist, a humanist and an agnostic walk into a restaurant.
The hostess says, “Table for one?”
An old joke, yes, but its essence lies at the heart of “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century,” a new book by Lex Bayer and John Figdor.
Bayer, 36, is a Stanford grad and longtime humanist, and Figdor, 30, is the new humanist chaplain at Stanford University. The two met when Bayer, a venture capitalist and engineer, wrote a news story about Figdor’s arrival at Stanford. The two soon discovered they liked hashing out difficult ideas about the way people live.
They began meeting regularly for coffee, brought along their computers and were soon on their way to drafting a book — a kind of philosophical roadmap to essential beliefs for nonbelievers.
“There are lots of books out there about why you should not believe in God,” Bayer said. “But there aren’t any about what do secular people believe in. I think that’s the question John and I felt hadn’t been adequately addressed.”
In exploring that, the two men — both whom have studied philosophy and logic — came up with 10 essentials. For the extra-nerdy, there’s even “a theorem of belief” in the appendix that looks like something a mathematician might scribble.
The result is 10 “non-commandments” — the authors’ irreducible statements of atheist and humanist belief.
First up: “The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.”
No. 2 on the list: “We can perceive the world only through our human senses.”
Halfway through, at No. 5, the authors conclude: “There is no God.” Once over that hurdle, the non-commandments become less controversial — an ethical society is good, as is moral behavior.
But it is the last non-commandment that makes these maxims very different from the biblical version: All of the above is “subject to change in the face of new evidence.” They are, quite literally, not written in stone.
The goal of the book, the authors say, is to encourage atheists and humanists to define what they believe so they can articulate it better, both to themselves and to a broader society that often regards atheists as immoral and untrustworthy.
“We want to show people who may have a false view of the atheist community as this sour group of people who want to prove there is no God and sit in a basement all day and argue about that,” Figdor said. “But we want to show them it is actually full of happy, empathetic and compassionate people whose lives are full of meaning and value.”
What’s also different is that these non-commandments are intended to be interactive. Included in the book is a worksheet where readers can craft their own list of non-commandments. They can share these commandments on a website the authors set up for just such an exchange.
Some of the submissions read like prescriptions for happiness: “Be happy,” “Do not fear death,” and “Keep your sense of humor.” And some are commandments of the biblical kind: “Do not kill,” “Do not steal” and “Be truthful.” Others express a sense of hope that abiding by them could lead to a better world.
“Treat yourself, others and the planet with compassion and reverence,” Leslie Heil submitted.
Figdor and Bayer are delighted by the range — about 1,600 responses submitted so far.
To encourage more, they’ve established a “ReThink Prize” — $10,000 to be distributed among 10 winners whose submissions receive the most votes. The contest runs through Nov. 30, and all the submissions will be available online for discussion and inspiration.
The book has been received warmly by atheist and humanist reviewers. David Niose, president of the Secular Coalition for America, called it “a wonderful exploration of life as a skeptic.”
And some in the religious world have lauded it, too. Dudley Rose, associate dean for ministry studies at Harvard Divinity School, where Figdor was a student, wrote a supportive blurb for the book.
“Living rightly with one another is at the heart of these non-commandments,” Rose said in a telephone interview. “That is very similar to the way in which I view how those of us in religious communities think of our commandments and our lives with one another and everyone else in the world.”
The Ten Non-Commandments:
I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.
II. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.
III. We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.
IV. All truth is proportional to the evidence.
V. There is no God.
VI. We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us happy and avoid things that do not.
VII. There is no universal moral truth. Our experiences and preferences shape our sense of how to behave.
VIII. We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy.
IX. We benefit from living in, and supporting, an ethical society.
X. All our beliefs are subject to change in the face of new evidence, including these.

For the first time ever...There was a Muslim prayer service at the National Cathedral and it went off without a hitch.....Just Kidding!!  One Godly woman: or as I would call her...a religious nut, went insane with rage....well, here is the story by Raw Story

The woman who disrupted the first ever Muslim prayer service conducted at the National Cathedral claims she was sent to protest the ceremony by God after reading about it on the Drudge Report.
In an interview with World Net Daily, Christine Weick, 50, said she read about the event on Drudge and became enraged, saying, “My blood began to boil as I read the comments of how this is to be such a wonderful event and how religious tolerance can, for the first time, be shown in our nation’s capital.”
Friday’s prayer service was just beginning when Weick stood up and began walking towards the front of the cathedral shouting.
“Jesus Christ died on that cross. He is the reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,” she said. “We have built …allowed you your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your mosques and leave our churches alone? We are a country founded on Christian principles.”
According to Weick, she expected to get arrested but was instead politely escorted from the cathedral and handed from police officer to police officer before being conducted to the street.
“They never said a word to me. Two guys came up and got me. I remember one large man in a suit taking me by the arm, very strongly but he did not hurt me,” she said.
After being ejected, Weick said she got into her SUV and began the 400-mile trip back to Tennessee where she  says she lives in her car after being disowned by her family  because she took a stand against same-sex marriage and other “moral issues.” According to Weick,  her husband divorced her last year “over a spiritual conflict.”
Speaking of the prayer service, Weick said she knew in advance that the event was for “invited guests only.”
“That’s when I knew I had to be creative, and so did God,” Weick explained. “I was driving there on my way from Tennessee, and I’ve got a lot of doubts in my mind: Am I going to make a fool of myself? Am I going to be in jail for the weekend?”
During her long drive to the nation’s capital she saw what she believed was a sign from God.
“There’s this woman stepping out of her vehicle on the side of the road, clapping and giving me two thumbs up, and I’m like, ‘That was the strangest thing,’ ” she said. “The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘That’s my confirmation right there.’ That’s all I needed, and from that point on I knew this was something I’m going to do; and that was the catapult that moved me to keep going towards Washington.”
Weick also credited God with getting her past security.
“It was a God thing how I got past all that security in the beginning. They never ID’d me, and I had brought my ID with me just in case, and I thought that would be my downfall, being from Michigan, that they would say, ‘What is she doing here?” Weick explained. “According to reports, this was a heavy security event. They checked every bag and every person that walked in there. I bet some security people are in big trouble today.”
After slipping into the cathedral, saying she felt like God had made her invisible, Weick said she was appalled by what she saw.
“Then it hit me… I had such an angst come over me. Seeing these Muslims sitting on their rugs ready to bow to a god, causing such an abomination in the house of the Lord,” she said. That was when Weick spoke up and was subsequently ejected
“I took a very strong stand on something last year. My husband divorced me over it. It broke my heart. I have a lot of heartache back home, a lot of hurt,” she said. “And I felt the Lord telling me, ‘You are going to go from place to place for me.’”
As for her future plans, Weick said she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her situation.
“Don’t be sorry for me. I have a very nice SUV. I go out to eat, I have a bank account,” she told WND. “I am just too Dutch to pay 60 or 70 bucks for a hotel every night when I can spend my nights in my car. And I travel every night from place to place, and that is what I was doing when I saw the story in the Drudge Report.”

And there, folks, you have religious tolerance  101.

 Here is an article from Alternet the other day that pretty much parallels my position on religion

November 12, 2014  |  

While the burgeoning atheist movement loves throwing conferences and selling books, a huge chunk--possibly most--of its resources go toward the Internet. This isn’t borne out of laziness or a hostility to wearing pants so much as a belief that the Internet is uniquely positioned as the perfect tool for sharing arguments against religion with believers who are experiencing doubts. It’s searchable, it allows back-and-forth debate, and it makes proving your arguments through links much easier. Above all else, it’s private. An online search on atheism is much easier to hide than, say, a copy of The God Delusion on your nightstand.
In recent months, this sense that the Internet is the key for atheist outreach has started to move from “hunch” to actual, evidence-based theory. Earlier this year, Allen Downey of the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts examined the spike in people declaring they had no religion that started in the '90s and found that while there are many factors contributing to it--dropping familial pressure, increased levels of college education--increased Internet usage was likely a huge part of it, accounting for up to 25 percent of the decline in religious belief. While cautioning that correlation does not mean causation, Downey did go on to point out that since so many other factors were controlled for, it’s a safe bet to conclude that the access to varied thought and debate the Internet provides is persuading people to drop their religions.
But in the past few months, that hypothesis grew even stronger when a major American religion basically had to admit that Internet arguments against their faith is putting them on their heels. The Church of Latter Day Saints has quietly released a series of essays, put together by church historians, addressing some of the less savory aspects of their history, such as the practice of polygamy or the ban on black members. The church sent out a memo in September telling church leaders to direct believers who have questions about their religion’s history to these essays, which they presented as a counter to “detractors” who “spread misinformation and doubt.”
While there are plenty of detractors who will share their opinions offline, there’s little doubt that the bulk of the detractors plaguing the church are explaining their views online, which is why this has become a problem now for a church that used to act like it could exert total control over believers’ access to information. One of the church historians, Steven Snow, openly cited the internet as the source of the criticisms. “There is so much out there on the Internet ,” he told the New York Times, “that we felt we owed our members a safe place where they could go to get reliable, faith-promoting information that was true about some of these more difficult aspects of our history.”

While the memo sent to church leaders strongly implied that the websites bothering believers are full of disinformation, the likelier story is that they’re worried about all the historically accurate information out there. The Mormons tend to be plagued more than other major churches by historically accurate information, because they are a relatively new church and the historical records on their founders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are intact and hard to deny. This concern is reflected in the nature of the essays, which openly admit a lot of information that the church used to spend a lot of effort in minimizing, facts like exactly how many wives Joseph Smith had or the fact that polygamy was practiced by many members long after the church officially banned it. Not that they had much of a choice. If members of the church learn this stuff from Wikipedia instead of from their own religious authorities, it will likely sow more anger and distrust of the church for misleading them.

The Internet generally gathered around President Obama for his recent comments endorsing an extremely strong version of net neutrality that would make it very difficult for corporate internet providers to give certain people preferential internet access over others. His comments were seen as a victory for political activists, everyday bloggers, and non-profits that would lose out on the ability to compete with moneyed corporations and other institutions in the free-for-all that is internet discourse. But atheists and critics of religion also win out with net neutrality. Giant, well-funded churches would probably love to pay for better access to your computer screen than any atheist blogger could afford, but if net neutrality becomes the law, they won’t have that ability.
The Mormons might be the most obvious example of a church that has had to deal directly with non-believers using the Internet to get unprecedented abilities to publicize their critiques of religion, but there’s good reason to believe that the feedback religions are getting online is hurting other churches. Is it any coincidence that Pope Francis is undertaking the monumental task of trying to make the Catholic Church seem a little less forbidding in the age of the Internet?
At a recent conference on technology held by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Monsignor Paul Tighe expressed concerns that the Catholic Church is losing out by not being more aggressive online. “If the church in some way is not present in the digital, we’re going to be absent from the experience and from the lives of many people,” he said. “If we withdraw, then we’re leaving those areas to the trolls. We’re leaving it to the bullies.”
Again, it’s hard to believe that trolls and bullies, as irritating as they may be, are the real issue here--trolling is aggravating, but it’s not very persuasive. No, the real threat to the faith is people making strong cases against the Catholic Church and religion in general. Some of those cases are boldly stated and some are more polite and accommodating, but either way, they are real arguments and far more threatening to religion than some trolls saying stupid stuff that is best ignored.
It will be interesting to see how religions adapt to the fact that the Internet makes it that much harder for them to control their believers’ access to information. Some will probably be adaptable, like the Mormons, realizing that a little more information-sharing and transparency is the only way to keep trust alive. Others, like Pastor Mark Driscoll of the fundamentalist Mars Hill Church in Seattle, will react by doubling down, trying to convince their followers to stay off the Internet rather than read persuasive cases against their beliefs. But the Internet’s beauty is it makes satisfying basic curiosity as easy as typing some words into a search bar. Odds are that’s a temptation fewer and fewer believers will be able to resist.




    

Picture from Immoral Minority blog.  Thanks Gryphen!

Today is the 12th of November, 2014 and it's snowing.  Humbug!  It's not unexpected in Wisconsin but this a little early.

I read an article today about an author by the name of Dan Brown.  He wrote the book "The Da Vinci Code" and now has a new book he is pushing.  I am not promoting the book so I won't tell you the title but I guess the premise of the book is that Religion and Science can coexist and even rely on each other..........What Crap.   Science relies on facts, peer review, the ability to change ones mind if relevant facts dictate it.  Religion relies on...a book.  It is entirely speculative....no observations, no evidence.
Religious people use made up "answers" to make decisions and judge other people... There's something deeply arrogant about religion: the believers are not able to say "I don't know." They always know everything, they know what "god" wants and, thus, when its bad or good for other people too, no matter if the others believe in the same god or not, no matter if they have undeniable evidences of the contrary.
Mr. Brown asks..."Where did we come from", "Why are we here", and "What becomes of us after we die".  Here is the answer Mr. Brown....Stardust, Evolution, Stardust.  See how easy that was.

Another article I read today...The Mormon cult er...Church has finally admitted that Joseph Smith was a pervert.  Well, they didn't really say that; they admitted that he had 40 wives one of them being just 14 years old.  His successor was  Brigham Young.


Young was a polygamist, marrying a total of 55 wives, 54 of them after he converted to Mormonism. The policy was difficult for many in the church. By the time of his death, Young had 56 children by 16 of his wives; 46 of his children reached adulthood.

Well the election is over and the Repubs have wrested the Senate away from the Dems.  Now they are going to have do something instead of just complaining about the Senate.  It,s going to be an interesting two years.

I saw a headline the other day that screamed...REPUBLICANS WILL RULE FOR 100 YEARS....
Eh....I don't think so.   The reason they won so many seats this time was exactly the same reason they one in the last mid-term....Young people, African Americans and Latino voters won't turn out unless the Presidency is being voted on.   This mid term had the lowest turn out since 1920 and the Repubs were fired up.  So I believe that instead of 100 years...they will have two.  The statistics are against them.  The browning of America is here and the majority of them vote Democrat. 

And now for some religious headlines...

Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced that about one third of the Catholic Parishes in New York would be closing or merging with other Parishes.  That to me is good news.  It was also stated that although church attendance is down in New York, in some places it is up and new parishes are being built.  The final numbers for 2013 though reflect the fact that people are turning away from organized religion.  61 new parishes were built in the U.S. in 2013 while 191 were closed.

James Lankford was elected Senator from Oklahoma.  He gave an interview to Tony Perkins of the Family Research council and said this..."I come from a biblical worldview in the way I address issues,” Lankford said. “I look at Nehemiah and how he handled things when he stepped into Jerusalem. It was that the people were in disgrace and the wall was broken down, but the two things that he focused in on was the constructive side of things and the debt. Half of the Book of Nehemiah is just getting the people out of debt, so they could actually take on the other things.”

I don't know anything about the book of Nehemiah but I will read it and have more to say about it in my next entry.

It is amazing to me that we give even the smallest amount of credence to people who continue to follow and receive direction from a book written 3500 years ago by people who believed the earth was flat, diseases were caused by demons, stars were encased in a watery filament and weather patterns could be changed by animal sacrifice.