Bill Gothard’s Solution for Crime in Chicago: “Increase Serotonin Levels”
The strange thing is that Gothard actually believes he is being scientific. Another fundamentalist leader would probably argue that the solution to crime in Chicago is for people to know Jesus, but Gothard doesn’t stop there. Instead, he goes into all of this about serotonin and the “gut brain” and bright light therapy, and somehow ends by encouraging people to increase their serotonin levels by reading the Bible. [Read more…]
Bill Cosby, the Church, and Supporting Victims
This is the conceit of Christianity—it is a religion that purports to uphold and value the weak, the poor, the victim, but in practice defends the strong, the rich, the abuser.
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Answers in Genesis Says Humans Did Not Come From Africa—And It Gets Weird
Yes, you read that right. The claim here is that Africans have more diverse mitochondrial DNA than non-Africans because they have seen twice as many generations as non-Africans. Yes, the claim really is that Africans have borne children at substantially lower ages than non-Africans for all time, a claim made based on modern marriage data from the United Nations.
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Lesbian Duplex 126: An Open Thread
It’s time for another Lesbian Duplex thread! If you have a link or article or interesting thought that’s not relevant to an ongoing thread, you can share it here. If a conversation on another post has turned entirely off topic, you can bring it here also. Every so often, as the number of comments on a given Lesbian Duplex post becomes unmanageable, I put up a fresh post.
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Saturday Link Love: Lambs, Dolls, and Pandas
Saturday Link Love is a feature where I collect and post links to various articles I’ve come upon over the past week. Feel free to share any interesting articles you’ve come along as well! The more the merrier.
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Voice in the Wind: An Interlude with Decimus and Phoebe
One of the most puzzling things about this book is considering where we are expected to show sympathy—and how Rivers believes she is portraying her characters. I am fairly certain Decimus and Phoebe are supposed to be sympathetic while Julia is not. I read this book as a teen, and I remember feeling drawn to Hadassah and royally annoyed by Julia. On this read-through, though, I have little but sympathy for Julia.
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Young Earth Creationism Is Evolving
Jeanson does not object to Venema’s statement there are transitional fossils, and that the gaps in the fossil record are being (or have been) filled. Instead, he accepts these claims. He asserts simply that transitional fossils and the increased filling of gaps in the fossil record are not incompatible with young earth creationism. What’s strange is that this argument is very different from the one I grew up hearing.
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Michael Pearl to Domestic Abuse Victim: Suffer Silently
This sort of advice could get someone killed. While I’d be horrified enough that Mike is urging this woman to stay with her abusive husband and accept his abuse with a smile, he’s also telling her that her children will not be harmed (even though they have been harmed already) if she does so. This is the absolute height of irresponsibility.
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Evangelical Pastor Doug Wilson Rips Southern Baptist Convention for Condemning White Supremacy
Yes, you read that right—Wilson equated antebellum abolitionism with racial hatred and called it a “rebellion against God.” It is perhaps not at all surprising, then, that Wilson calls the Black Lives Matter movement racist. What’s surprising—and concerning—is that there are evangelicals who continue to treat him as an authority.
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The Grenfell Tower Fire and Political Libertarianism
It seems that in 2014, the U.K. minister of housing declined to require sprinklers because the Tory Government had committed to reduce regulations. “We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation,” he said. I grew up in the U.S., not the U.K., but this rhetoric is achingly familiar.
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