Anti-Jubilee preacher Dave Ramsey just helped Tom Corley's list of "20 Things the Rich Do Every Day" to go viral on the Internet. Corley might as well have called this list: "A Rich Guy Finds 20 Different Ways to Accuse the Poor of Being Lazy." In the spirit of that nasty piece of kick-'em-while-they're-down trash, here are "8 More Things the Rich Do Every Day." Read more
This is what the distinction between news content and advertising has come down to: the difference between blue and green. I suppose this is what they mean by "yellow journalism." Read more
It is impossible to understand Al Mohler's 21st-century idea of "biblical inerrancy" without understanding its roots in the 18th- and 19th-century defense of slavery. That's what this hermeneutic was created to do. That is the function it has always existed to provide. It is White Theology -- culturally bound, culturally created. And it makes no sense at all unless we acknowledge its intrinsic, insistent whiteness. Read more
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency recently confiscated 50 venomous snakes — “including rattlesnakes and copperheads and some non-native species” — and has charged their owner with “possession of class I wildlife (wildlife inherently dangerous to humans).” That seems pretty reasonable — both the law itself and the enforcement of it. This situation certainly seemed “inherently dangerous to humans” — not to mention being inherently dangerous to the wildlife itself, which was not being allowed to be wild-life. Importing venomous non-native species also... Read more
Right-wing comics take aim at the poor. A compline from Adam McHugh. "The cries of the cashiers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts." Larry Klayman's "Second American Revolution" not expected to affect traffic in downtown D.C. today. Why all Methodist clergy with children must now be suspected of being total jerks to their kids. Trusting lawless televangelists. Kmart is getting good at trolling the religious right. Read more
It's always embarrassing for anyone to admit having spent many years insisting that the world would not exist for many more years. That's true for the Adventists' sesquicentennial, and for the 50th anniversary of The King Is Coming ministries, and for the 40th anniversary last year of the classic Rapture-mania movie "A Thief in the Night." Read more
Marriage was a sacrament, Father Bert insisted, yet he was unwilling and unable as a priest of the church to administer that sacrament without the proper paperwork from a low-level functionary at the county courthouse. Read more
"Bible Secrets Revealed" is like watching the opposite of "Red Zone." It's like you've got this fantastic satellite TV system that lets you watch every NFL game, but the guy sitting next to you with the remote switches away from every game just before anybody scores. And then he turns to you and says, "Is it possible, then, that they never scored at all? Could it be that no team has ever scored?" Read more
"Analog Monte Carlo Procedures" replicates a favorite creationist "experiment." The saint who gave her name to creatures creationists can't abide. The diversity of scripture is not a problem to be solved. HOAs -- even worse than you thought. A sermon on the burial of John McArthur's "Strange Fire." The most embarrassing man in Springfield, Ill., strikes again. "Physician, heal thyself." Read more
No skeptic has ever left such a stage saying, "Gee, an uncaused cause ... I'd never thought of that." And no religious believer has ever been brought up short, saying, "Why, yes, an impersonal, not-at-all transcendent tea kettle in space also can't be disproved and thus is a perfect analogy for belief in God. How silly I've been." Read more
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