Check this out:
More details, including the reaction of the student’s father, here. Bottom line: the student will be a new school next year.
A fourth grade “science” test
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Tag Archives: religion
Pro-life…
… but anti-gun safety. These numbers indicate that among evangelicals, pro-life means anti-abortion, but pro gun. Apparently it is more important to protect the fetus than the child.
A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, found that among the roughly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants who say the term “pro-life” describes them very well, 64 percent are opposed to stricter gun control laws, while 33 percent favor them.
The picture among Catholics is the opposite. The poll found that of the 4 in 10 Catholics who say that “pro-life” describes them very well, 61 percent support stricter gun control laws and 33 percent oppose them. The survey was taken in January and included more than 1,000 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
The morality of IP
At a time when there’s a virtual arms race of church leaders trying to redefine their theology and ecclesiology better to fit a series of demographic shifts and cultural transformations, why have I not heard any of the soi-disant pioneers call attention to the tremendous loss to the internet’s future, to the beneficiaries of digital innovation, to the ‘public’ of the public domain? Why have they not soberly and humbly taken up the question of where the churches stand relative to the enclosure of common goods by indefinitely-extended copyright periods? Why have they not, at the very least, reminded their blogging, Facebooking, tweeting, tumbling, pinboarding, SMSing, iPod-listening audience that Aaron was agitating on behalf of the very digital affordances that have made their movements possible?
* * *
The theological ramifications of technology are only just beginning to receive searching theological attention. My colleagues Jana Bennett and Brian Brock have written books about it, Alan Jacobs has been at it for a long time, and I pitched in my essay; but when a force of digital nature (as it were) falls silent, stills, stops, one might anticipate at least a murmur of theological deliberation about what’s at stake, how we cane to this pass, how churches might take a deep breath and rethink their relation to copyright and the commons, to digital technology and the increasing centralisation of digital power (exemplified by the intensification of government authority to examine, collect, and redeploy all manner of digital data from emails to browser histories, without a warrant). Without for a moment minimising other concerns about other dimensions of human well-being — does not this concern touch the lives of far more people than are even inchoately aware of it, who are at risk of being made an example by a zealous investigator or a self-righteous media corporation?
– from an essay written by A. K. M. Adam. It is time for morality to have a seat at the IP table. For example, why should publicly-funded scholars and researchers allow their work to exist solely behind paywalls?
Obama dissapoints … again and again (updated)
You would think that Barack Obama would be able to learn from some of his mistakes. Here was one such mistake. Obama invited Rick Warren, an anti-gay rights pastor, to deliver the invocation at his first inaugural.
And now, he has done it again, by selecting Rev. Louie Giglio, from Atlanta. Here is what Giglio said as part of a sermon in the 1990s:
In [the sermon], Mr. Giglio cites Scripture in saying that homosexuality “is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin in the word of God.” He warned against gay rights. “That movement is not a benevolent movement,” he said. “It is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes accepted as a norm in our society.”
You can listen to the entire sermon here.
It seems to me that Obama should insist on some sort of explanation from Giglio as to his current views before allowing him to speak at the inauguration. It probably won’t help, but you should sign this petition at the White House.
Update: Well, I was wrong and it didn’t take long for the pastor to remove himself from the event.
Related articles
- White House Has No Comment on Anti-Gay Inaugural Pastor Choice (my.firedoglake.com)
- White House Mum On Inaugural Benediction Speaker’s Past Comments On Gays (buzzfeed.com)
- Inaugural Benediction To Be Delivered By Pastor Who Gave Vehemently Anti-Gay Sermon (thinkprogress.org)
- Is Obama pulling another Rick Warren? (salon.com)
- White House petitioned to replace ‘antigay’ Pastor Louie Giglio at second Obama inaugural (miamiherald.typepad.com)
Asshole of the day
The winner is: Mike Huckabee. He believes that the slaughter in Connecticut was caused by lack of prayer in schools and not by powerful semi-automatic weapons in the hands of a psychopath:
So apparently Huckabee’s god is incapable of protecting children in the face of government regulations? Not much of a god, is that?
(via TPM)
Related articles
- CAN we PLEASE TALK GUN CONTROL NOW!?!?!?! (skydancingblog.com)
- The Slaughter at Sandy Hook (guardianlv.com)
Political quote of the day
I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.
– U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) responds to a question regarding how old the Earth is.
Needless to say, the Earth’s age is not a “great mystery” even to non-scientists. This response is merely the latest embrace of willful ignorance by republicans in pursuit of votes by evangelicals.
This land is mine
Check out this incredible animation/history lesson about the so-called “Holy Land.”
This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
A brief history of the land called Israel/Palestine/Canaan/the Levant.
Who's-killing-who viewer's guide here: http://blog.ninapaley.com/2012/10/01/this-land-is-mine/
Religious quote of the day
All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell, And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.
– Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), together with Todd Akin, a member of the House Science Committee.
The latest news on Steve Jobs
Via Wall Street Journal – South Asia:
When Apple Inc AAPL founder Steve Jobs died after a long fight with cancer last year, software engineer Tony Tseung sent an email to a Buddhist group in Thailand to find out what happened to his old boss now that he’s no longer of this world.
This month, Mr. Tseung received his answer. Mr. Jobs has been reincarnated as a celestial warrior-philosopher, the Dhammakaya group said in a special television broadcast, and he’s living in a mystical glass palace hovering above his old office at Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters.
Bigot of the day
So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”
You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”
Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.
– South Carolina pastor Sean Harris. You can listen to the audio here.
Related articles
- “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach…” (althouse.blogspot.com)
- Remember, Kids… (slog.thestranger.com)
However could this have happened?
Here.
Christionist homophobes testify
Omaha is considering the adoption of an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians. Check out the wacko “christian” testimony against the proposal.
(via TowelRoad)
Related articles
- Omaha Nondiscrimination Protections Face Proposed Limitations (thinkprogress.org)
- Nebraska Churches Buy Full-Page Ad To Oppose LGBT-Friendly Nondiscrimination Protections (thinkprogress.org)
- Nebraska Bill Would Block LGBT Protections In Omaha Anti-Discrimination Law (queerty.com)
Religious quote of the day
Pat Robertson says that prayer could have stopped the tornadoes that devastated parts of the midwest. That is quite a god he has there. He is quite the meteorologist as well.
The best of Hitchens
Watch these two videos (via Andrew Sullivan):
In God (conservatives) trust
Only the motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“from many, one”) survived the committee in which Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin had served. All had agreed on that motto from the beginning. The current motto, “In God We Trust,” was developed by a later generation. It was used on some coinage at the height of religious fervor during the upheaval of the Civil War. It was made the official national motto in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, to signal opposition to the feared secularizing ideology of communism.
In other words, “In God We Trust” is a legacy of founders, but not the founders of the nation. As the official national motto, it is a legacy of the founders of modern American conservatism—a legacy reaffirmed by the current Congress.
– Thomas Foster, quoted by Andrew Sullivan.
