This post is courtesy of Ron Gold.

Did you hear about little Nadia Bloom, an 11-year-old Florida girl with Asperger’s syndrome who was rescued yesterday after spending four days lost in a swamp? It’s definitely a feel good story, but I don’t see why the guy who found her has to call it a miracle:

While Nadia’s parents spoke with reporters in Florida, her rescuer, James King, was in New York making the rounds of television shows. He clutched a leather-and-gold Bible as he spoke with The Associated Press outside the Manhattan studios of “Inside Edition.”

“God led me to her,” King said before describing what he encountered as he searched the swamp. “You can slip and fall, there’s a lot of mud, and you can’t always see where you’re walking.”

. . .

King said that as he got deeper into the wilderness looking for Nadia, he kept repeating verses from the Bible for guidance, including one from Proverbs that says, “Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding … And He will direct your paths.”

I’d say Mr. King is a hero, but not a miracle worker. If you know a girl has wandered into a swamp, and then find her in said swamp, is it really that unexpected? No, Yahweh did not save the day, it was simply the result of Mr. King’s hard work and perhaps some luck.

Furthermore, if little Nadia didn’t have to be hospitalized for dehydration and a bacterial infection, it would have been amazing, but still not a miracle. To be a miracle, something mind-blowing should have to occur.  She was saved by angels who descended from Heaven and flew her to safety?  Now that would be a miracle.

Greeting everyone, this post is by Ron Gold.

One of the reasons I respect Judaism more than most religions is that the faith mandates a relatively humane treatment towards animals. In contrast, every now and then I run into a Christian who seems to take the perspective that God put animals on the Earth for humans to exploit, putting them on a similar level to resources like oil or timber.  But Jews rarely take that view, and indeed, Israel might be the first country to ban fur:

The international anti-fur campaign, backed by animal rights activists such as Brigitte Bardot and Sir Paul McCartney, has picked Israel as the perfect starting point because the fur trade is tiny — worth about $1 million a year — and because, under Jewish tradition, the undue suffering of animals is forbidden.

“The market here is not that big,” said Josh Rotbart, a legal representative for the Israeli organisation Let The Animals Live, which also runs an animal rescue centre in Lod, near Tel Aviv. “We are not talking about Canada or the US or China. It’s a small industry and it’s pretty easy to ban a small industry. It’s hot here. You don’t really need to wear fur.”

The chief opposition comes from ultra-Orthodox Jews who wear shtreimels (pictured below), a hat made out of sable fur. However, I think they would be better off using a synthetic material, particularly since they might accidentally be wearing someone’s pet:

The campaign began when an Israeli news station reported that much of the “fake” fur being imported from China was, in fact, made from the pelts of cats and dogs.

Yikes, that’s some highly disturbing stuff, and another reason to avoid fur all together.

Whether the ban succeeds or not is anyone’s guess, though Rotbart says he is “pretty optimistic” of an eventual victory.  I can’t speak for other atheists, but I’m hoping he is right.

However, one thing I am sure of is that the United States won’t be banning fur anytime soon.  I happened to witness a protest outside a fur store yesterday, and it was attended by exactly three people.

Hi everyone, this is Ron Gold.

Latino-Americans have traditionally been dependable Catholics, though they are slowly but surely becoming more religiously diverse, as seen below:

Notice the number who report no religion has almost doubled from 1990 to 2008, going from 6.4% to 12.4%. This is encouraging, because it shows that cultural influences can drive people to become more moderate and enlightened in their religious beliefs. Hopefully, other cultures can benefit from assimilation in a similar manner.

Hey everyone, Ron Gold here.

This news isn’t a surprise, but now it’s official:

Mississippi is the America’s most religious state, according to a Pew Forum study on the levels of devotion in America, which asked respondents whether religion is important in their lives. Eighty-two percent of Mississipians said yes.

Mississippi also leads the nation in weekly church attendance (60%), in frequency of daily prayer (77%), and in the number of people who believe in God (91%).

So does God reward the citizens of Mississippi for their high levels of faith? I can’t say for certain, but I can cite these facts I gleaned from extensive Wikipedia research:

–Mississippi ranked dead last among all the states in terms of overall health according to the Commonwealth Fund. On the bright side, food is abundant, as the state has very high levels of obesity.

–Their 2006 per capita income was the lowest in the country at $26,908 (though this is somewhat offset by Mississippi’s low cost of living).

–Finally, in 2008, the state ranked last in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Now contrast Mississippi with Vermont and New Hampshire, the two least religious states according to the Pew Forum study (only 54% of people in these states reported a belief in God).  As far as I can tell, these largely godless states have not been punished with severe natural disasters, poor public health, bad education, or horrible economies. 

Not that I hate Mississippi–I wish I were there right now, out of freezing weather and an impending blizzard–but it might be time for the fine people of that state to reexamine their priorities.

This post is courtesy of Ron Gold.

Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, has been extra busy lately.  In the last few days, he’s thrown his ire–or, as Hemant put it, thrown a “shit fit”–at The Simpsons and comedian Sarah Silverman for alleged anti-Catholic bigotry. 

But Donohue has really topped himself with a column titled ”America’s secular saboteurs,” which was published in The Washington Post’s “On Faith” section.  His argument is that secular liberals want to destroy American culture, and starts by claiming:

There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside.

Yesterday’s radicals wanted to tear down the economic structure of capitalism and replace it with socialism, and eventually communism. Today’s radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place. In that regard, these moral anarchists are an even bigger menace than the Marxists who came before them.

If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it.

Just because some people have different values than you, Mr. Donohue, it doesn’t mean they want to cause “societal destruction.” With beliefs like those, it’s hard to believe that Donohue is the president of a major organization; to me, he more closely resembles the physical embodiment of Catholic paranoia.

And then the insights in Donohue’s conclusion get even more bizarre:

The only way secular saboteurs can be stopped is by an alliance of religious conservatives across faith lines. The good news is that this is already happening. In the fight over gay marriage, the scorecard is 30-0: traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Mormons, along with a big contribution from the Latino and African American communities, have succeeded in throwing a roadblock at this crazy idea.

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

Read that last paragraph again. Yes, he really did just say secular saboteurs are “too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids.”

Remember, Donohue is the guy who gets offended by practically everything, but then spews out highly offensive garbage like this.

I feel it might even be irresponsible for The Washington Post to publish this.  It’s unfair to all the sane Catholics.  Though in their defense, they did publish a counterpoint.

Hey everyone, this post is courtesy of Ron Gold:

Reincarnation in one of those beliefs that seems quaint, but not dangerous. After all, what harm is there in a person thinking they could come back in another life as a butterfly or a mollusk? Well, believing in reincarnation is actually causing people to die, at least in India, where people are afraid to donate organs for religious reasons:

Hindus believe a person’s spirit is eternal, and the body is just a shell. But some say that if your organs are removed, you may be reincarnated with them missing, said Dr. Aarti Vij, part of the organ retrieval department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

“It can be demoralizing,” Vij admitted. “Hinduism is so much about karma and giving without expectations, but some people just hold onto these beliefs.”

Old-fashioned bigotry is also part of the problem:

Sometimes, doctors also turn away potential donors because some families demand organs go to recipients of the same religion.

“We have to tell them no and ask them to do it for the goodness of the cause,” said Sunil Shroff, a transplant surgeon in Chennai.

Even with 1.1 billion people–and an astoundingly high average of 288 traffic fatalities a day–India only found 80 legal organ donors last year. India is an emerging world power, and is quickly catching up to developed countries economically and technologically. But to catch up medically, they will need to modernize some of their oldest beliefs.

Hey, Ron Gold here.

An Islamic model in Malaysia–yes, they do exist–has been sentenced to be caned for her henious crime of drinking beer in public. She was set to receive the beating only a matter of hours ago, when suddenly, it was delayed for Ramadan related reasons. However, this was not a welcome decision:

The first woman in Muslim-majority Malaysia to face caning for drinking beer was reprieved Monday because of the holy month of Ramadan. Her family said she would rather get the thrashing with a rattan cane now and put the ordeal behind her.

Islamic officials had taken Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old mother of two, into custody and were driving her to a women’s prison for the caning when they abruptly turned around and sent her back to her family home in northern Malaysia.

“She feels like a football being kicked around,” Kartika’s father, Shukarno Abdul Muttalib, told The Associated Press. “She’s so exhausted and unhappy with the delay. She would prefer to just receive the six strokes and have everything finished.”

Alcohol isn’t always illegal in Malaysia.  Indeed, the country has a complex, unhealthy relationship with intoxicating beverages:

Beer, wine and liquor is widely available at shops, bars and restaurants in Malaysia, unlike in more austere Islamic nations such as Iran and Pakistan. Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities in Malaysia are free to consume alcohol but its Shariah law forbids Muslims — who make up 60 percent of the 27 million population — from drinking, although a minority of Muslims still indulge despite the religious stricture.

Islamic morality police — enforcement officials of the Islamic Religious Department — arrested Kartika in a raid for drinking beer at a hotel lounge at a beach resort in Cherating in Pahang state in December 2007. Kartika was sentenced to six lashes of a rattan cane by the Shariah court last month in what was considered a warning to other Muslims to abide by religious rules.

Even though the whole practice sounds barbaric, the morality police explain that it will be one of their more compassionate canings:

Islamic officials had insisted that the caning’s purpose is to educate rather than punish. They say the rattan cane supposed to be used on Kartika would be smaller and lighter than the one used for men, and that she will remain clothed.

Yes, that does sound educational!

But to be serious, Malaysia is rarely considered to be a land of extremists, and their morality police pales in comparison to those found in many other countries, such as Saudi Arabia.  Still, this “moderate” country can sometimes look anything but modern.