RTFA: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peop…

In the letter, he states: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can for me change this.”

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel s second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God s favoured people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them. ”

RTFA: http://www.gossipboulevard.com/2008/01/30/bart-sim…

Longtime Scientologist Nancy Cartwright, also known as the voice of Bart Simpson, last year gave the church $10 million to help spread the word of founder L. Ron Hubbard into other galaxies. It was all part of Scientology’s Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth, meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behavior. Surprisingly, Nancy, 50, forked over twice as much as the Scientology’s most prominent member, Tom Cruise, who only gave $5 million in an installment plan.

Who knew? This forces me to reconsider everything.

RTFA: http://audiotreasure.com/webindex.htm

The World English Bible is a public domain update of the American Standard Version of 1901 into modern English. This audio Bible can be legally copied and given to others. (non-commercial use)

This site is serving millions of Bible mp3 files per month and using several terabytes of bandwidth.

I didn’t read this anthology - I got the book on tape!

Regarding the Second/New Testament: Jesus was an Arab Jew, and it was the mis-application of Roman law (by a Roman) that got him crucified. It’s right out of the freaking book, people!

I haven’t seen Mel Gibson’s movie, but come on: the best that can be said is that the religious leaders were a powerful lobbying force, and that Jerusalem was a fully occupied territory, at the time. The rule of law was according to Caesar, not according to Jewish tradition.

By analogy, I’m all for blaming companies that focus on lobbying as a means of extending their bottom line, but the greater fault lies with the corrupted republicanism (no, not the party, but the consolidation of power in representatives) that permits such lobbying. Therefore, the lobbying companies are simply opportunists, while the political system itself is corrupt.

So, it was Pontius Pilat that killed Jesus, because:
1. Pilat tried to find a reason to crucify him (i.e. looked for a law that was broken)
2. Pilat failed (i.e. found Jesus innocent). This is where the process usually stops, and the prisoner is released.
3. Pilat granted the mob carte blanche permission to decide life/death for an innocent person. Note for the uninitiated: this is the unjustified part.
4. Based on Pilat’s authority, Jesus is condemned by the mob to be killed. (justified by #3, even if #3 isn’t justified).
5. Based on the mob decision, Jesus is actually killed by Romans. (justified by #4, even if #4 is based on #3, and #3 isn’t justified).

The steps are all fine EXCEPT #3. The process is supposed to end with #2, but it went totally wrong when #3 happened. It’s not legal to ask a mob their opinion about whether or not an innocent person should be killed - that is exactly the problem with mob rule, and is indistinguishable from the complete absence of law. The chain of authority is broken in #3, because that’s where Pilat acts in a manner that is inconsistent with Justice. Pilat’s actions are not predicted by nor are they constrained by Law. Right???

Um, the Roman Catholics seem to agree with my conclusion in their Nostra Aetate.

Basically, Passion Plays are an anti-semitic rendering of the gospel stories. To “blame it on the Jews” is to ignore current religious doctrine as well as the original source material. In fact, Passion Plays, and their embedded anti-semitism, may be one of the oldest conspiracy stories of all time, going back to 1634 and persisting through mainstream culture, even in modern times. By building a story around a Jewish conspiracy to kill Jesus, you end up with an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Clear?

I’ll say it again: it was the Romans who did it.

Of course, the fact that there’s a Christian country inside downtown Rome indicates that the debt was somewhat repaid…

Enough of this. Let’s just say that I’ve found these MP3s to be a great resource for, ah, critical inquiry.

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071130/wl_nm/pope_enc…

VATICAN CITY Reuters - Pope Benedict, in an encyclical released on Friday, said atheism was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history.
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The 75-page “Spe Salvi,” which takes its Latin title from a quote by St Paul in hope we were saved, is an appeal to a pessimistic world to find strength in Christian hope.

That’s funny, I would say religion has been responsible for some of the ‘greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice’.

RTFA: http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.h…

How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? Our map gives us a brief history of the world’s most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.
Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!

RTFA: http://revolutioninjesusland.com/index.php/

I’ve been arguing on this blog that a real revolution is happening inside of Christianity—one that the left needs to learn about, learn from and collaborate with. As you might guess, I’m running up against some healthy skepticism. So you can imagine my excitement when, in Kansas City the other day, Elizabeth and I happened upon a big old church with this sign hanging across it

Religion. Interesting.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7013402.stm

The leader of a US polygamist sect has been convicted of being an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her older cousin.

A court in Utah found Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed Mormon prophet, guilty of two counts of encouraging the young girl to have sex against her will.

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) could face life in prison.

RTFA: http://www.sexinchrist.com/threesome.html

The Old Testament is full of references to Biblical men, such as Solomon, David, and others, who had not only multiple wives, but also harems of concubines at their disposal. Today the practice of polygyny (one man having multiple wives) is illegal in most places. Although we can acknowledge polygyny in principal, we must recognize and honor the primacy and priority of the marriage bond between one husband and one wife. Whenever a third party is introduced into this equation, it must only be to support and strengthen the existing marriage bond between those two individuals. So, if bringing in another woman would in any way undermine the relationship between husband and wife, it should not be pursued.

Playing by God’s Rules

If, on the other hand, a married couple feels their relationship would benefit from them establishing a loving involvement another woman, out of respect for the couple’s marriage, and out of respect for any marital attachments of the other woman, they must abide by certain limits and conditions:

(1) To avoid the impropriety of male homosexuality, a heterosexual couple should not under any circumstances form a threesome with another man.
(2) Both women involved in the threesome must be willing to keep within traditional female roles (i.e., not taking on masculine appearance or behavior in or out of the bedroom) and recognize the male as the leader in the relationship.
(3) If the wife’s lesbian sex partner is unmarried, it may be permissible for the husband to have relations with her only with his wife’s consent.
(4) If the wife’s lesbian sex partner is unmarried, but the wife does not wish her to have relations with the other woman, the husband should respect this.
(5) If the wife’s lesbian sex partner is married, her husband must not have objections to the relationship.
(6) If the wife’s lesbian sex partner is married, the husband should refrain from having any sexual relations with her, and should make every effort to control his fantasies about her. He should concentrate his attention on his own wife.

…guidance from the Internets.

RTFA: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rational_r…

Creation Science Evangelism has submitted many copyright violations on youtube in the past few days. The owner of the ministries is Kent Hovind who over the last 20 years has been seen as a public liar. He has held many lectures where he spends hours making people more ignorant as to how evolution works. He now sits in a jail cell for having refused to pay $840,000 in taxes. His defense the whole time was that his money belonged to God and nobody else.
He has stated that none of his material is copyrighted, and so far all of the instances of videos that have been pulled would have fallen within the boundaries of fair use.

Short version: Creation Science Evangelism uses false copyright notices to trick YouTube into deleting certain accounts.

RTFA: http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

Click on the image to install Debian GNU/Linux

Totally sweet. I use Ubuntu, which is derived from and roughly parallels Debian. However, you really can’t lower the barrier to entry any more, at this point. There isn’t a one-click, browser-delivered installer for Windows XP or Mac OS X. Try Linux.

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#K.26R_st…

The Allman style is common, and is named after Eric Allman. It puts the brace associated with a control statement on the next line, indented to the same level as the control statement. Statements within the braces are indented to the next level.

while (x == y)
{
something();
somethingelse();
}
finalthing();

This style is similar to the standard indentation used by the Pascal programming language and Transact-SQL, where the braces are equivalent to the “begin” and “end” keywords.

Meh - not to get overzealous about the topic, but I think this is the easiest to read and write.

RTFA: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/

The head of the Galactic
Confederation (76 planets around
larger stars visible from here)
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
solved overpopulation (250 billion
or so per planet — 178 billion on
average) by mass implanting.
He caused people to be brought to
Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb
on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2)
and then the Pacific area ones
were taken in boxes to Hawaii
and the Atlantic Area ones to
Las Palmas and there “packaged.”
His name was Xenu. He used
renegades. Various misleading
data by means of circuits etc.
was placed in the implants.
When through with his crime Loyal Officers
(to the people) captured him
after 6 years of battle
and put him in an electronic
mountain trap where he still
is. “They” are gone. The place (Confed.)
has since been a desert.

L. Ron Bumquist’s first sketched notes about scientology.