You’d be surprised what you can get used to

You’d be surprised what you can get used to January 29, 2015

• “Just as everything Bryan Fischer has to say about ‘biblical values’ gets outweighed by everything he has to say about people who aren’t white, so too everything mainstream evangelicals have to say about ‘biblical values’ gets outweighed by everything they haven’t said about people like Bryan Fischer.”

AIDS-denying, racist homophobe Bryan Fischer is the public face of the American Family Association and it’s most prominent spokesperson, but the AFA says he will no longer bear the official title of “spokesperson.” Or somethingMore about this later.

• The image to the right here is from a recent collection of Christian book covers at Christian Nightmares. It seemed appropriate to make that image a link to the first post in this thoughtful series by Samantha Field.

SexAndYou• Skull found in cave in northern Israel is roughly 48,000 years older than Al Mohler’s universe.

The bigger news on the find is that it may help us understand when our folk — homo sapiens — first started interbreeding with our Neanderthal cousins. Joel Duff has a fascinating discussion of “Christian Responses to the Spiritual and Physical Status of Neanderthals.”

But what does the Bible say about the spiritual status of Neanderthals? I don’t know — I’ve never seen the Neanderthal Bible and wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway. We think that some of them buried their dead. We cannot know what prayers, if any, they may have prayed at their funerals.

• Let me amend and expand my usual appeal for more singing in protests and public demonstrations. Singing is good. If you can get a marching band, that’s good too.

• Today is January 29. Aaron Campbell was unarmed when he was killed by police on January 29, 2010.

• “Whatever Happened to ‘Eco-Terrorism’?” Lauren Kirchner asks at Pacific Standard. It’s a good overview of a real, but overhyped, phenomenon that petered out, living on today mainly in the re-runs of the dozens of late-’90s and early-’00s TV cop shows that all featured at least one “eco-terrorism” episode.

• Doctor Science takes a deeper dive into a subject we mentioned here the other day: “The Saudi succession system isn’t really strange, but that doesn’t mean it’s functional.

• “Don’t read the comments” is a good rule of thumb, but pieces like this one need a comment thread. Sara K. Runnels has done a terrific job establishing the template for a joke, and then offering 28 funny variations on that theme. She’s also nicely established that this can, and should, go on and on and on much longer. It’s the kind of joke that wants to pass the baton on to the comment section and let them run with it as far as they can.

 


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