Comment

Comment by doone 12 hours ago

A Godless President?

DEC 11 2013 @ 1:03PM

Isaac Chotiner suspects that America is ready for an atheist candidate:

A Gallup poll from 2012 … showed that only 34 percent of Americans know Barack Obama’s religion. (Some people think he is Muslim; others are not sure.) If that’s the case—and there has been a lot of coverage of the president’s faith—isn’t it at least possible that an atheist could be elected? I agree that there will be challenges, and while it wouldn’t be smart to go after someone directly for their atheism, perhaps “values-based” attacks would have more currency. Moreover, I think this imaginary atheist politician would have to be someone well established—someone the American people felt comfortable with. But if, say, John McCain or Hillary Clinton announced that while they respected Christianity and faith, they no longer believed in God, well, I think they could still get elected. (Winning a Republican primary would be the problem for McCain.) And remember, despite my caveat about the politician having to be well-known and not at all mysterious, it was also assumed that the first black president would be someone “proven” like Colin Powell. Five years before his election, Barack Obama was virtually unknown.

Jennifer Michael Hecht, who provides the chart above, wants atheist politicians to speak up:

Comment by doone on December 1, 2013 at 2:29pm

An explanation for religious charity giving

It’s Not God That Makes You Give

DEC 1 2013 @ 11:28AM

David E. Campbell, the co-author, with Robert Putnam, of the in-depth study of religion’s place in America’s social fabric, American Grace, reveals a twist to the trope that believers are more charitable than the non-religious:

Having found that religion and charity go hand-in-hand, Robert Putnam and I sought to understand why.  The answer might surprise you. We initially thought that religious beliefs must foster a sense of charity—whether inspiration from biblical stories like the Good Samaritan or, perhaps, a fear of God’s judgment for not acting charitably. However, we could find no evidence linking people’s theological beliefs and their rate of giving—which also helps to explain why the “religion effect” varies little across different religions. The rates for charitable giving according to the Jumpstart survey are: 61 percent of Black Protestants; 64 % of Evangelical Protestants; 67 % of Mainline Protestants, 68 % of Roman Catholics, and 76 % of Jews. By contrast, only 46 % of the not religiously affiliated made any charitable giving.

Rather than religious beliefs, we found that the “secret ingredient” for charitable giving among religious Americans is the social networks formed within religious congregations. The more friends someone has within a religious congregation, the more likely that person is to give time, money, or both, to charitable causes. In fact, even non-religious people who have friends within a religious congregation (typically, because their spouse is a believer) are highly charitable—more so than strong believers who have few social ties within a congregation. Our findings thus suggest that if secular organizations could replicate the sort of tight, interlocking friendship networks found within religious organizations, they too would spur a comparable level of charitable giving.

Comment by doone on November 28, 2013 at 11:32am

Your Occasional Pope

By Charles P. Pierce at 4:15pm

Dear Papa Francesco:

Welcome to American politics, wherein people take this guy seriously:

"Somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him...This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope."

And wherein somebody gives this superannuated toff his own teevee show.

"I go to church to save my soul...It's got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics."    

And wherein nobody has yet thrown a net over this person.

"At a time when Christianity worldwide is under siege by Islamic jihadists, the leader of the Catholic Church claims that the quran teaches non-violence. As Christians across the Muslim world live in abject terror and fear kidnapping, rape and slaughter to the bloodcurdling cries of ‘Allahu akbar,' the pope gives papal sanction to the savage."  

Seriously, just say Merry Christmas and write us all off, OK?

Read more: Pope Francis Rush Limbaugh Marxism - Your Occasional Pope - Esquire 
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Visit us at Esquire.com

Comment by Chris on November 26, 2013 at 5:29pm

Signed.

Comment by Hope on November 25, 2013 at 1:09pm

Sign the petition & help Hamed Abdel-Samad..

English translation of the petition:

Guido Westerwelle, German Foreign Minister
Angela Merkel, German Federal Chancellor
Hassim Al-Beblawi, Egyptian Prime Minister
Yesterday afternoon, Hamed Abdel-Samad was kidnapped in Cairo. Abdel-Samad is an author, journalist and political activist,

He is known for his criticism of fundamentalist Islam and political Islamism.

Because of his criticism of Islam, he's been for months at risk: In June, the preacher Assem Abdel Maged" in Egypt announced publicly to murder; Abdel-Samad & later, he received many threats.

This news has to be taken very seriously..

Abdel-Samad is in imminent danger of death.

Since he is a German citizen and was kidnapped in Egypt, we call on both the German and the Egyptian government to do everything in their power to rid Hamed Abdel-Samad as soon as possible.

Do everything you can to rescue Hamed Abdel-Samad! http://www.change.org/de/Petitionen/deutsche-bundesregierung-%C3%A4...

Comment by doone on November 24, 2013 at 6:38pm

Of Gods, God, And Men

NOV 24 2013 @ 5:07PM

Those following the work of the New Atheists have probably encountered the Richard Dawkins quip, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Aidan Kimel responds by remarking that “God is not a god,” and turns to this passage from theologian Herbert McCabe’s God Matters to explain what he means – and why he finds that Dawkins’s statement misses the mark:

God must be incomprehensible to us precisely because he is creator of all that is and, as Aquinas puts it, outside the order of all beings. God therefore cannot be classified as any kind of being. God cannot be compared to or contrasted with other things in respect of what they are like as dogs can be compared and contrasted with cats and both of them with stones or stars. God is not an inhabitant of the universe; he is the reason why there is a universe at all. God is in everything holding it constantly in existence but he is not located anywhere, nor is what it is to be God located anywhere in logical space. When you have finished classifying and counting all the things in the universe you cannot add: ‘And also there is God.’ When you have finished classifying and counting everything in the universe you have finished, period. There is no God in the world.

Kimel’s commentary on the passage – with a surprising twist at the end:

If God is not a being but rather the ultimate source and cause of all that he has freely brought into existence, then he cannot be understood as a god. Deities are but “bits of the universe”; but the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the transcendent creator of the universe. He is the reason why there is a universe, whether it contains gods, fairies, sprites, centaurs or whatnot.

But if God is not a god, then what is he? McCabe is direct: we do not know. We do not know what God is. We cannot provide a definition of his nature. We cannot comprehend his essence. Hence we really do not know what we are talking about when we use the word “God.” All we know is that whatever God is, he is the transcendent Mystery of our existence…. Perhaps now we can understand why Christians were sometimes accused by pagans of being atheists.

Comment by Chris on November 20, 2013 at 8:50am

@ Dave. Josephus, Flavius was a politician who claimed royal ancestry. Shouldn't that tell you enough about his credibility? How much do you believe what todays religious extremist politicians say about history (even recent history ie within the last thirty years)?

Comment by Chris on November 20, 2013 at 8:30am

@ Hope professor Adah Almutari's lecture reminds me of other lectures I've seen on Biomimicry.net, or http://http://www.bioneers.org/

Comment by Davy on November 19, 2013 at 3:32pm

Can anyone verify that this is correct or a load of hogwash!

14. Josephus, Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 18. 63, 64. [Although portions of Josephus’ comments about Jesus have been disputed, this reference to Pilate condemning him to the cross is deemed authentic by most scholars.]

15. Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44. In Great Books of the Western World, ed. By Robert Maynard Hutchins, Vol. 15, The Annals and The Histories by Cornelius Tacitus (Chicago: William Benton, 1952).

Comment by Hope on November 19, 2013 at 3:26pm

Why Saudi clerics are scared of Saudi women.. Watch professor Adah Almutairi here:

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