Belief in things like astrology, psychics, ghosts, tarot cards and reincarnation etc. remain as popular as religion. Recent surveys show that roughly 75% of the population in the US believes in the paranormal. Since the US is made up of about 86% who believe in supernatural magical gods, it makes sense that most would also believe in things paranormal. Several reasons given for belief in the paranormal can also be the reasons people believe in god:

They make people feel special or important in an otherwise chaotic and apparently random, uncaring universe.

They offer a sense of meaning or control over things that are otherwise beyond our understanding.

They offer a sense of comfort by ‘connecting the dots’ and creating a sense of order and structure in life.

Because believers don’t understand how to be skeptical and hold such claims up to basic standards of logic and reason.

Then there are those who blindly believe those things are obviously true and real.

This is a very good two-parter by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins emphasizes the point that while it is okay to mock those who believe in the paranormal, religion is protected from the same scrutiny and open skepticism.

Part One

Part Two

Nice one from Crooks and Liars:

In discussion of McCain’s painful fumbling over why health insurance covers Viagra but not birth control, The Situation Room panel…debate the position between a rock and a hard place that McCain finds himself, eager to win over those feminist Clinton supporters but hesitant to speak out against that mainstay of the Republican platform: restricting women’s reproductive freedom. [...]

CAFFERTY: Well, you know, the answer is Viagra is used to treat a medical condition, erectile dysfunction. Birth control is a lifestyle choice. And that’s why insurance companies don’t reimburse for it unless pregnancy represents a danger for the woman. And then there’s a gray area where you can do a negotiation.

Excuse me? I know that most men don’t have a huge well of knowledge on the workings of a woman’s body…but I think that in absence of knowledge, it might be smarter to avoid definite declarations like that. Oral contraceptives are absolutely used to treat medical conditions [...] And since when is the life of a woman to be considered a “gray area” for negotiation? But there’s no gray area about a man’s desire to get it up, nor any consideration to the consequences of what happens when he can? Jack, you disappoint me.

But the reply is simply: let’s just say why McCain’s comments are right in line with the ‘publicans: because sex for any reason besides procreation is BAD, and there’s no real reason for a woman to have an orgasm unless she’s also willing to “fully commit” to pregnancy and childbirth.

And we all know where such a line of bullshit comes from…

But, of course, that’s a “religious belief,” so we can’t criticize it…

While you’re pondering the nature of the freedoms you’ve just lost (if you’ve ever had them at all) it looks like Rush just gave a TV performance — and it’s been 33 years since the last one. So, like, cool beans…

Well, just so we’re all on the same page (cuz, like, it’s kind of important)…

The power to imprison U.S. citizens without charges

…[T]he President has the power to arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the U.S., and imprison them indefinitely in a military prison, without charging them with any crime, based on his assertion that the imprisoned individual is an “enemy combatant.” [...] [T]he President can order anyone in the U.S. imprisoned in a military brig as an “enemy combatant” — even if they have never fought on a battlefield or with a foreign power against the U.S. Rather, mere accusations by the President of “terrorism” are sufficient to justify the indefinite incarceration of such an individual as an “enemy combatant,” who is then denied basic Constitutional guarantees. To say that such individuals can be held “for the duration of relevant hostilities” means, of course, that such individuals can be imprisoned by the President in a military brig not just for years but for decades. [...] Most critically of all … this decision applies every bit as much, and to exactly the same extent, to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil as it does to non-citizens (such as al-Marri) who are in the U.S. legally. [...] So, then, the President has the power to imprison in a military prison even U.S. citizens inside the U.S. — who are pure civilians, having not been anywhere near a battlefield — indefinitely and without having to charge them with any crime.

Enjoy the rest of your day…

And God Bless America

Registrar Who Won’t Serve Gays Because of Religious Beliefs has Illegitimate Child

Lilian Ladele recently won a suit against Islington Council alleging discrimination after she was punished for refusing to do her job and perform civil partnerships for same-sex couples. A judge ruled that Ladele was within her rights to deny service to homosexuals as a staunch Christian. However, it has now been revealed that Ladele is also a single mother to a child, now 27, born out of wedlock. So Ladele is so firmly Christian that she can’t possibly marry same-sex couples, but not so religious as to remain chaste until married. Presumably God will forgive the sin of extramarital sex but not the “sin” of joining two people together in a loving relationship. The discovery that she has an illegitimate son could cast suspicion on some of the testimony she gave at the discrimination tribunal. The tribunal wrote: “Ms Ladele is a Christian. Her unchallenged evidence was that she holds the orthodox Christian view that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of all others and that marriage is the God-ordained place for sexual relations.” “She told us that she believed this to be contrary to God’s instructions that sexual relations belong exclusively between a man and a woman within marriage.”

Ah, yes, moral xians…

I love clever! Clever lyrics. Clever humor. Clever dialogue. Clever cartoons.

I hate recycled clever! And no one — absolutely, no one! — does “recycled clever” like xians! Never miss an opportunity to read the smarmy marquees — their never-ending preciousness tests the body’s insulin levels. It’s rather like drinking Caro Syrup straight from the bottle…

Some of you may remember my run-in with another driver in Massachusetts. He was wearing a Starbucks-ripoff Tshirt bearing the Starbucks logo, with the mermaid replaced with jeebus and some scripture drivel. I pointed out to him that he and his kind cheapen jeebus and gawd by taking them into the marketplace. That he had no idea where his money went. Did it go to xian groups and charities? Or just to only-in-it-for-the-bucks-because-there’s-a-sucker-born-every-minute “entrepreneurs”? He laughed at me, and my questions.

I started to see the Tshirt rip-off in Pilot truckstops (as well as many other rip-offs of well-recognized commercial images). I found the website and discovered that the company is in Arkansas (not China, as I suspected). Started by a construction laborer, it is now the first-second-or-third largest xian Tshirt-maker, trading places frequently with two other competitors. The 20-year-old company (as of June 2007) has more than 90 employees working at its 60,000-square-foot facility.

Who knew there were such huge demand for xian Tshirts? Do the math: they have sold 7million Tshirts! And they are currently retailing for $17.99!

BigBucks for jeebus & gawd? Not so much. They do some philanthropy, and they say they are “big on tithing”. Before or after expenses and taxes? Just asking…

And have they applied for permission to use the images? I’ll go out on a limb and say, “probably not”. Xians are not known for respecting boundaries.

Here’s a list I culled from the website. (Since I had to register and login, I can only hope that the link works for you. You really have to see them, to believe the sheer chutzpah and hubris of xians!) If you can’t link, below are text of Ts and their commercial image thefts.

Abreadcrumb & Fish (Abercrombie & Fitch clothing)

Amazing Grace (American Idol TV)

C.O.P.S./ChristiansObedientlyPreachingSalvation (C.O.P.S. TV)

HERO (HERO TV)

LOST (LOST TV)

jesusMEANTtoDIEforyou! (Mountain Dew soda)

jesus died for MY SPACE in heaven (MySpace website)

P.O.L.I.C.E./Preach to Others the Love we share In Jesus Christ, Everyday. (P.O.L.I.C.E TV)

Sacrificed for Me (Starbucks Coffee)

“Stay Out Of Hell Free” card (Monopoly board game)

Jesus – sweet savior – King of Kings (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups candy)

god wants YouToBe saved! (YouTube website)

it was You Who he died for (YouHoo soda)

I looked all over the website for an address to snailmail them my antipathy to the theft of copyrighted images of commercial and cultural icons, in order to make a profit on jeebus & gawd icons. I’ll have to googlemap them, I guess. How many xian-ripoff-Tshirt companies can there be in Berryville, Arkansas?

Sorry, but this stuff always cracks me up…

Catholic school principal caught in public gay threesome

The principal of a New York Catholic school was arrested Sunday after being caught naked with two other men on a vacant property. “Two men got out and met a third person on the side of my house,” nearby resident Rich Pacheco told WCBS, “and they went on that property and that’s when I called 911.” 41-year-old Gabriel DeJesus, who heads Sacred Heart School for the Arts in Mount Vernon, is currently being investigated by the New York Archdiocese. Officials said that he “has been a well-regarded educator,” and he was still serving as the school’s principal as of Monday. DeJesus would only say that he “made a mistake” when asked for comment.

The only mistake I can (maybe) see here is that you had sex in public.

Well, that, and being catholic (definitely).

But gay threesomes? Go nuts, dudes! (Pun intended.)

In an opinion piece by USA Today’s Tom Krattenmaker, he states:

“The specter of violent religion certainly hangs over us in these times, especially when it comes to certain followers of the world’s two dominant religions. Christian and Muslim conflict-mongers drone on against “Islamic terrorists” and “Christian infidels,” respectively, while violence continues erupting in the name of Islam, and conservative Christian figures in America, like Pat Robertson and John Hagee, urge violent solutions to foreign policy problems. (Robertson, you’ll recall, spoke favorably of assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Hagee, the Texas mega-church minister of falling-out-with-John McCain fame, has repeatedly called for immediate military attacks against Iran.)

Yes, there appears to be considerable truth to the oft-heard claim that Christian-Muslim co-existence must be achieved lest our collective future turn out brief and brutal. Which is why it might appear outrageous to suggest, as I’m about to do, that religion may also be just the catalyst we need to steer us clear of the apparent collision course.

Religion — a solution to the problem of religiously motivated conflict and violence?

While religion has been the cause of many of the world’s violent conflicts and confrontations, Krattenmaker points out that each religion also offers teachings of peace and unity (which we rarely see even within the religious sects and denominations of the same religions themselves.) Krattenmaker suggests that while religion has been the justification for going to war and invading other lands, religion can also end wars. Call me cynical, but when I hear those words I automatically think of Revelation and how fundamentalists from both sides are looking forward to the great and believed unavoidable “final battle” for imaginary heaven and an imagined “renewed” Earth.

Krattenmaker answers his own questions:

Religion — a solution to the problem of religiously motivated conflict and violence? Yes, actually. Because in their best traditions, the world’s two dominant faiths do promote peace, both through their central teachings and the lessons-by-example taught every day by innumerable Muslims and Christians who take their scriptures seriously.

But that depends on WHICH scriptures both sides want to pull out of their ancient texts to take seriously. There is support for both. So, how can we ever expect for both sides to end war and come to any kind of resolution when based upon their contradictory and inconsistent guidebooks?

Krattenmaker sums up his essay with more idealistic questions and answers:

“So how we will know religion in the final analysis? By its peace or by its violence? The scriptures have had their say. It’s now up to the believers — through their words and works — to settle the account.”

I am not holding my breath. And like I said above, I remain cynical . . . pessimistic based on what we have seen from religion thus far. The fundamentalists like the evil parts of their mythology books too much to give them up.

The only hope for this world is with the moderates of both religions. But when it comes down to making a choice, which side will they ultimately choose?