LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

I deleted the last post because the individual who posted was having a massive spam attack. I also banned hir from this site.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This NYT article talks about a church vs. state lawsuit:

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

DOVER, Pa., Sept. 23 - Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about "alternatives" to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design.

But 11 other parents in Dover were outraged enough to sue the school board and the district, contending that intelligent design - the idea that living organisms are so inexplicably complex, the best explanation is that a higher being designed them - is a Trojan horse for religion in the public schools.

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.( Read more... )

More coverage:

Morning Edition on NPR.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Wren's Nest article talks about a creepy practice of some "See You At The Flagpole" Christians:

United by their love for Christ and their concern for a spiritually broken world, students Wednesday met at local schools for the annual "See You at the Pole" event.

Nearly 150 students gathered early in the morning at the Edmond North High School yard where they prayed for their school, for their community, for President Bush and for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

They also prayed for non-Christian students in their school and wrote their names down on paper.

In a solemn, symbolic offering, they nailed the pieces of paper to a wooden cross, set up beside the flag pole.

But this isn't the only type of negaitve prayer magic (and yes, it is a form of harmful, binding magic) that these True Believers ™ are encouraged to practice. On this SYATP site, believers are encouraged to pray over photographs in their yearbook:

Yearbook praying:

This is a great strategy for getting your church involved in praying for Christian and non-Christian students at your school. See if you can purchase an extra yearbook from last year or plan ahead and by an extra one this year. Cut the pictures out in rows that include five to seven students and have them ready for people at your church to pick up. Ask them to pick up a strip of pictures and commit to pray for each student once a week. They don’t even have to know the student to pray for them. The key is to have them pray that if the student is a Christian, that God would use them to make an impact on their campus that day. That if they are not a Christian, that they would give their hearts to Christ. Can you imagine the impact that would happen if every student on your campus were prayed for once a week for the entire year? Another option, in case you can’t get a yearbook is to use a school directory or a list of students at your school. This should be a public list that’s available to anyone so you won’t be invading anybody’s privacy. If your school is big, involve other churches in this prayer effort and watch what God can do when His people pray.

This is not benevolent prayer- not by a long shot. The impact and intent of these bindings and prayers is to forcibly convert people to their flavor of faith by the application of binding or image magic- either by 'nailing' them, or by 'breaking' them. Both are extremely negative practices (not to mention being prohibited in their very own Scriptures), and should be 'outed' for the genuine 'black' kind of magic (harming others through applied prayer) that is truly is. Were Pagans or other faiths permitted to practice such things on school grounds, I can guarantee you that the Powers That Be would not see them as beneficial at all. Sauce for the goose. This practice needs to be outed for the hypocracy it truly is.

Another link: Should I 'See you at the pole?'

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY larathia)

Is anyone else worried about this site?

They don't seem to be affiliated with groups mentioned here, but the stated philosophy and goals are a tad worrying. Independent offshoot?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's an interesting article from UUworld about competing liberal and conservative religious values. Why should the conservatives corner the market on 'family values'?

Like most religious liberals, we Unitarian Universalists imagine ourselves to be nice people. It is those in the Christian Right, we believe, who want to force their moral code on everyone else and use public resources to proselytize for their faith. We, on the other hand, believe in tolerance, free choice, and letting people be what they have to be. What’s so scary about that? If the rank-and-file of organizations like Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition feel threatened by us, we think, it can only be because they have been duped by their unscrupulous leaders.

Not necessarily.

True, preachers of the Christian Right have said a lot of unfair things about liberals, both religious and political. But conservative Christian fears have not been created ex nihilo. As overstated as those fears may at times become, they have a basis, and we would do well to understand it.

Such a call for understanding, I realize, will sound to some like an invitation to surrender. Won’t opponents see our empathy as a sign of weakness and be encouraged to make even bigger demands on us? If they make to comparable effort to understand and accommodate us, won’t we be drawn into one-sided compromises that slide gradually towards capitulation? In the face of a hard and uncompromising opponent, we seem to have no choice other than to become hard and uncompromising too. Only one strategy seems to make sense: Give them hell.

Talk To Action author Fred Clarkson takes a look at this article and posts his own ideas about it.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

'"...stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." Robert Heinlein – "Time Enough for Love"


'This, in one tragic nutshell, is what is so wrong and incredibly dangerous about True Believers, and why they should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the levers of power...'

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

~I just left challenging_god. It's not the community I once joined. Its moderator has 'embraced Christ' and how the fuck you can 'challenge god' once you've done that..? Well, whatever.

..x-posted from my LJ..

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

The following is an excerpt from an article in the August/September issue of Southern Brew News, a circular aimed at beer enthusiasts living in the Southeastern U.S. This article is not available online, I'm afraid.

===============================
A North Carolina grassroots organization has been trying to change a law [that] prevents beers with more than 6% alcohol from being sold in the state. This group goes by the name of Pop the Cap...

In July, as House Bill 392 (the Pop the Cap bill) was making its way to the Senate floor, something potentially disastrous happened... Senator [Jim] Jacumin (Burke and Caldwell Counties) made his point known quickly. He felt that North Carolina should not allow high alcohol beers into the state because it would cause a "loosening of sexual inhibitions, more pregnancies and more abortions." ( Plus some good ol' Strom Thurmond racism )

[Senator John] Kerr, who has been a firm supporter of NC wineries in the past, is for some reason staunchly against the [bill]... Kerr has been quoted in the Daily Reflector (a Greenville, North Carolina paper) as having been approached by religious groups, asking him to slow the bill down.
===============================

( More about Georgia's experience )

Oh, and I don't think the high-priced "high-gravs" have increased our unwanted pregnancy or abortion rates, either. Interestingly, such things are not as much of a problem in Belgium and Holland, where many of these beers are brewed. I wonder why?

EDIT: "On Saturday, August 13, 2005 Governor Mike Easley signed House Bill 392 (a.k.a. the "Pop The Cap" bill) into law." The theocrats lost this one, but I still think it's instructive to review their efforts in this case.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Scientific American has an interesting article about the subversion of science for political gain. An excerpt:

Subverting scientific knowledge for short-term gain

By Boyce Rensberger

Thomas Jefferson would be appalled. More than two centuries after he helped to shape a government based on the idea that reason and technological advancement would propel the new United States into a glorious future, the political party that now controls that government has largely turned its back on science.

Even as the country and the planet face both scientifically complex threats and remarkable technological opportunities, many Republican officeholders reject the most reliable sources of information and analysis available to guide the nation. As inconceivable as it would have been to Jefferson--and as dismaying as it is to growing legions of today's scientists--large swaths of the government in Washington are now in the hands of people who don't know what science is. More ominously, some of those in power may grasp how research works but nonetheless are willing to subvert science's knowledge and expert opinion for short-term political and economic gains.

That is the thesis of The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney, one of the few journalists in the country who specialize in the now dangerous intersection of science and politics. His book is a well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists. Mooney's chronicle of what he calls "science abuse" begins in the 1970s with Richard Nixon and picks up steam with Ronald Reagan. But both pale in comparison to the current Bush administration, which in four years has:

* Rejected the scientific consensus on global warming and suppressed an EPA report supporting that consensus.
* Stacked numerous advisory committees with industry representatives and members of the religious Right.
* Begun deploying a missile defense system without evidence that it can work.
* Banned funding for embryonic stem cell research except on a claimed 60 cell lines already in existence, most of which turned out not to exist.
* Forced the National Cancer Institute to say that abortion may cause breast cancer, a claim refuted by good studies.
* Ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove information about condom use and efficacy from its Web site.

Go read the whole thing, then think about what is going to happen to this country if the IDiots gain control of our public schools.

(Thanks to swiftpaws for the link)