Via Agence France-Presse:

Web wanderers are more likely to get a computer virus by visiting a religious website than by peering at porn, according to a study released on Tuesday.

“Drive-by attacks” in which hackers booby-trap legitimate websites with malicious code continue to be a bane, the US-based anti-virus vendor Symantec said in its Internet Security Threat Report.

Websites with religious or ideological themes were found to have triple the average number of “threats” that those featuring adult content, according to Symantec.

Hey Daniel, are you still designing church websites? Is there something you need to tell us?

Anyway, Yahoo News suggests this is all the fault of the womens:

As recently as just four or five years ago, white males made up the vast majority of Internet users, with white women and then minorities following behind. Today though, nearly two out of every three Internet users is Asian, either from China, India, or the United States. And of Internet travelers in the United States, women are now as represented as men, which the newswire says, accounts for the increasing likelihood of hacker attacks on religious sites, which are predominately visited by women.

I’m not sure what to make of this. From The Jewish Press:

Tens of thousands of Ultra-Orthodox Jews will participate in a huge rally to be held on Sunday evening, May 20, at Citi Field (Shea Stadium) in Queens, New York, to combat the evils of the Internet and the damages caused by advanced electronic devices.

[...]

The website JDN cites one of the event organizers who said: “This will be a mass rally never before seen in the history of Orthodox Jewry in the U.S. It will be a gathering of unity of all the Jews living in the U.S., a gathering to disseminate information and a prayer rally for the success of Klal-Israel’s war on the Technology which threatens the sanctity of the homes of Israel.”

The “Gdolei Israel” (leading sages) behind the conference have specifically ordered to schedule it for the eve of Rosh Chodesh Sivan, a day which is considered particularly fortuitous when it comes to children’s education, since the goal of their campaign is to save the generation from the ravages of advanced technology.

Every generation complains about the technologies of the next generation. I used to hear a neverending litany of complaints about kids watching television. Now it’s the internet. But to pack a stadium?

So the Pennslyvania House of Representatives declared 2012 the “Year of the Bible.” The Reps used this as an opportunity to explain just how gosh darn important the Bible is to this country.

Then some atheists decided to point out one of the major flaws in the Bible: its pervasive acceptance of slavery. They do this with the following billboard:

When Mark Shea at the National Catholic Register hears about this, he chastizes us atheists for expecting too much from the Bible:

One of the things grownups understand is that things like the epistle to the Colossians were not written by a wizard who could wave a wand and eradicate an institution that had existed absolutely everywhere the fallen human lived since the dawn of time. He was the messenger of a small, harrassed religious sect which possessed absolutely no political power in either the Roman empire to which he went, nor in the tiny Jewish country from which he hailed. His mission was not to be a second Spartacus, but to announce the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Much as normal people have always done, he worked within the granite “givens” of his culture.

We seem to be caught in the middle here. We could wish that Mr. Shea would skip over the atheists and talk directly to the people who are praising the Bible as the book from which all morality flows. He could explain to them that no, Paul had a very limited agenda and shouldn’t be relied upon to provide the foundation for American law. Somehow, that never happens.

As an aside, the Quakers were a “small, harassed religious sect which possessed absolutely no political power” during the 17 and 18th century, and yet they are considered the world’s first anti-slavery institution. (There were anti-slavery individuals before that, but the Quakers seem to be the first group.)

Will the wonders of Todd Bentley ever cease? He can heal with a punch or a kick and he can raise the dead. Now he tells Lisa Ling that he can smell cancer:

Via Jesus Needs New PR