Religion

It’s official, the contracts have been signed and paid for–the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s billboards will be coming to Phoenix. There will be five of them, all in central Phoenix, and both of the FFRF’s designs will be represented. There’s the “Imagine No Religion” billboard, pictured here in Denver, and another design that says “Beware of Dogma." The billboards will appear starting September 1, and I’ll post some photos once they’re up. The billboard locations will be: #1103 Cross streets: 3rd Ave & Van Buren. Located on 3rd Ave just north of Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 3rd Ave approaching Van Buren. At this intersection look forward and right. The sign is setback from a parking lot which makes for clear viewing and efficient picture taking. The Arizona State Capital, Phoenix City Hall, FOX News, and the Arizona Republic are all within a few blocks. #1245 Cross streets: 7th St & Coolidge. Located just north of the downtown area on 7th Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling southbound on 7th Ave just south of Camelback Rd but just prior to Coolidge. The sign is on the east side of 7th Street. #2005 Cross Streets: Jefferson & 13th St. Located just east of the downtown area and Chase Field on Jefferson Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Jefferson just after 13th Street. The sign is on the south side of Jefferson Street. #2501 Cross Streets: 19th Ave & Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex. #2911 Cross streets: McDowell & 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.When these billboards have gone up in other locations, they’ve usually generated some protests and complaints, as well as competing billboards, such as this one in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which accused atheists of hating America. That misses the whole point–the point is to let nonbelievers know that they are not alone, and to put them in touch with the FFRF and other local groups of people with similar opinions about the supernatural. One can certainly express disagreement with the sentiment (or the likelihood of a world without religion–I think it’s unlikely that religion will disappear from the world as long as there are social groups of human beings on it), but a response that claims that atheists hate America or are engaged in persecution is to mistake reality for a caricature like the one depicted in Robby Berry’s “Life in Our Anti-Christian America." Funding for these billboards was a joint project of the FFRF and various Meetup groups led by some folks from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup group, which is now up to 411 members. There are plans for a followup billboard, for which funds are still being raised, which will advertise a website promoting a diverse set of groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists, brights, and freethinkers. ...

At Rational Rant is an excellent three-part critique of a document that’s been floating around the Internet which claims to support the case that America was intended by its founders to be a Christian nation. In fact, the document is a mish-mash of fabricated quotations and misinformation. Rational Rant has gone to the trouble of digging up the details and even comparing four different versions of the document. “Dubious Documents”: part one, part two, part three

Creation Ministries International has updated its website about its legal battles with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky. The latest addition reports that in April, AiG served CMI with a lawsuit in the United States trying to stop the legal action in Australia–even though one of the two contracts AiG is trying to enforce specifies the law of the Australian state of Victoria as the governing law and forum. CMI will be defending itself in the U.S. against the new action.

P.Z. Myers has eloquently described what he did, after a bit of history from 1215 to the present. There’s so much well-described in his article that I resist the urge to quote from it at all–go read the whole thing, “The Great Desecration," at Pharyngula. UPDATE: Bill Donohue has used the occasion to issue yet another apoplectic press release. UPDATE (July 30, 2008): The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the First Amendment in their condemnation of Myers’ action. They seem to think it means that you can’t make fun of a religion unless you’re a member of it, and that everybody has to be a member of some religion. ...

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on his recent exchanges on a religion law mailing list with former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, in which Klingensmitt repeatedly makes false statements and attacks straw men. UPDATE: After reading more about Klingenschmitt, I’m going with dishonest. RBH (2008-07-24): Klingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?False dichotomy. You neglected the most likely alternative: "crazy." Lippard (2008-07-24): I'll be happy to accept that additional disjunct. ...

The Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century biblical manuscript that includes the oldest complete new Testament and a partial Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint), will be available online at http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/ beginning tomorrow, July 24. The site is currently live with a few page images from the manuscript, which was written over 1600 years ago (between 330-350 C.E.). Tomorrow, you will be able to look at images of the pages, see the Greek text in a window next to it, and translation into another language in a window below that–English, German, Russian, or Greek (presumably modern Greek).

The Skeptics Society has officially announced its 2008 conference, and the topic is not the one that was first suggested, war, terrorism, and security. Instead, this year’s conference is on “Origins: The Big Questions,” and is co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. The conference will be held at Caltech on October 3-4, and the speaker lineup includes Sean Carroll (the Caltech theoretical physicist, not to be confused with Sean B. Carroll, the University of Wisconsin at Madison professor of molecular biology and genetics), Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, Christof Koch, Kenneth Miller, Nancey Murphy, Donald Prothero, Hugh Ross, Victor Stenger, Leonard Susskind, Michael Shermer, Philip Clayton, and Mr. Deity. It’s an interesting mix of speakers for the subject matter, and I suspect I will attend, but I’d really rather go to a conference that brought critical thinking to the subjects of war, terrorism, and security.

The latest ApostAZ podcast is available, and it’s an “Apostamini”–a short one. This one has a short commentary from me about The Amazing Meeting 6. Contents: Apostamini 001 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- “Squared” from Greydon Square’s ‘The Compton Effect’. Ingersoll’s Vow. Amanda :). Pope George Carlin. Jim Lippard illustrates the cool points of TAM6 in Las Vegas (http://www.discord.org/). Greydon Square, “Dream” from ‘The Compton Effect’ album.

The Presidential Prayer Team has called for supporters to “Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God’s Word and His standards will be honored by our government." A piece of unattributed email has been going around in support of this proposition, with the following suggested Constitutional amendment to put that into effect: Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)For some reason Len Munsil’s Center for Arizona Policy organization hasn’t pushed this amendment in Arizona, instead preferring the unbiblical idea, not even widely recognized yet at the time of Charlemagne, that marriage should only be between one man and one woman.

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a nice takedown of David Kupelian’s article at the WorldNutDaily bemoaning how atheists are being allowed to publish books in these Christian United States. Ed shows that Kupelian has no idea what he’s talking about when he writes about Christianity in American history.