Mark 7:31-37: "He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.'" Read more
Mark 7:31-37: "He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.'" Read more
Q: Why was the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing read his rights? A: Because he was arrested and charged with a crime. Read more
The infectious jingles sung by FreeCreditReport.com’s Beck impersonator are also based on another, even more insidious lie — the notion that one’s “credit score” is a worthwhile, accurate or reliable measure of trustworthiness. Failure to make timely payments is one possible reason for a lower “score,” but so is the failure to have large amounts of disposable income. By confusing and falsely equating those two things — being untrustworthy and being poor — our current obsession with credit scoring feeds into the mythology that the poor are poor because they are less deserving, less moral, less worthy than the rest of us. Read more
It's one thing to say, "I'm telling a story, and in this story there are wizards, or warp drives, or Kryptonian supermen, so please just accept those as part of the terms required for enjoying this story." But it's quite another thing to say, "The Word of God, as interpreted by me, declares that certain actual events are about to happen, here in reality, very soon, and these will in fact involve miraculous fertility formulas." The willing suspension of disbelief is something we readers should grant to storytellers, but if the "Bible prophecies" of a "Bible prophet" require the suspension of disbelief, we should not be quite so willing. Read more
A Whovian watches "Firefly;" Niebuhrians watch "Game of Thrones;" horrible gendered T-shirts; the "shadow biosphere;" how ghost stories helped rediscover real history; and could the next Doctor be an American? Read more
It's the Friday music game -- I'll show you mine, you show me yours. This week, more songs with names in the title. We're finishing up the "J" names, including Jonas, Jones, Josephine, Josie, Jude, Judy, Julia, Juliet and Julio. Read more
The anti-anti-, i.e., pro-hate-crime talking point favored by Sheldon and his colleagues on the religious right is the idea that this will somehow lead to pastors being thrown into jail for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. It's a "slippery-slope" argument that has no basis -- and doesn't claim any basis -- in the text of the law itself. Nor does it have any basis in experience: Hate crime laws pertaining to racist motives are already on the books, yet none of the racist CHINO pastors still preaching their "curse of Ham" blasphemies has ever been prosecuted. Bob Jones III is still a free man. Read more
Dispatches from war correspondents on the battlefield, including: "Love the bigot, hate the bigotry;" James Dobson says pastors will be imprisoned; Pat Robertson warns against D&D; Antonin Scalia and the dustbin of history; truth and lies about birth control; and Jonathan Papelbon blows a save. Read more
The beginning of that court battle back in 1976 was the spark that set the religious right ablaze. Falwell denounced the revocation of Bob Jones University's tax-exempt status as government interference in Christian schools in the same terms Barber is using today: "the criminalization of Christianity" and "the government against Christians." Falwell made that argument in 1976 in defense of Bob Jones' racial discrimination. Matt Barber is making that argument in 2013 in defense of discrimination against LGBT people. Read more
Jubilation from Kelly Nikondeha; Daniel Fincke on why it's pointlessly rude to tell atheists they're going to Hell; Mary Hunt on Pope Francis and women; Rick Pearlstein on the narcissism that makes us more vulnerable to terror; and Harold Pollack says, "Want to fight terrorism? Learn first aid." Read more
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