Religion

The Access Research Network, a young-earth creationist organization formerly known as Students for Origins Research, states the following in its description of a DVD it sells of the 2003 debate on the resurrection of Jesus between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas, a professor at Liberty University: Dr. Habermas holds an M.A. in philosophical theology from the University of Detroit; a D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford; and Ph.D. in history and philosophy of religion from Michigan Sate [sic] University.The D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford is also mentioned in the description of Habermas on a website advertising the DVD “Jesus: Fact or Fiction." It shows up in his bio for a talk he gave at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kansas. There’s a slight problem with a doctorate of divinity in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford–there is no such college at Oxford. This same false claim is made in the Wikipedia article for Gary Habermas, with a link from “Emmanuel College” to the Wikipedia entry for Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, not Oxford. (Emmanuel College at Cambridge does have a “sister college” at Oxford, but its name is Exeter College.) Habermas’s current online resume lists no D.D. degree at all. So what’s the story? Is this Habermas’s error, or someone else’s? And what kind of error is it? If Habermas has a D.D. degree from a UK school, why doesn’t his current resume list it? (Hat tip to Roger Stanyard, who pointed this out in a comment at RichardDawkins.net last year.) I once exchanged some letters with Gary Habermas, beginning with a critique I wrote of the first edition of the book on immortality that he co-wrote with J.P. Moreland. I don’t believe anything in my critique was accounted for in the second edition of their book; the second edition still includes this false statement about psychic detective Peter Hurkos, even though I pointed them to critical material: “In carefully documented situations, Hurkos demonstrated very precise knowledge of cases as famous as the stolen Stone of Scone…and the Boston Strangler murders.” Even if they rejected my criticism, shouldn’t a matter of simple honesty to their readers have demanded that they include a reference to the existence of published rebuttals? ...

James J. Buchanan of the Christ Life Church in Tempe, Arizona, is accused of defrauding 30-40 people out of over $5 million over the last ten years. He claimed to be a financial planner, and took many people’s life’s savings, as well as money from the church. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says it’s hard to tell where the money went, but it appears that he used some of it to pay off early investors in classic Ponzi scheme style, and spent the rest on himself. His scheme collapsed this March, after he refused to provide documentation to show where one investor’s money was, and that investor refused a payoff to stay quiet and went to the police. (A previous discussion of religious affinity fraud on the increase, at the Secular Outpost.) UPDATE (11 February 2012): Also see “Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock” from The Economist, January 28, 2012.

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars tells how Dinesh D’Souza wrote an article in the 1980s about conservatives taking money from Rev. Sun Myung Moon, but then when he took money from Moon himself in 2007, denied that he knew anything about Moon.

The National Center for Science Education has a new YouTube video about how they proved in the Dover trial that the “intelligent design” in the book Of Pandas and People was simply old-school creationism under a different name.

The director of “The Secret” video, Drew Heriot, is suing its author, Rhonda Byrne, for $150 million. Heriot claims he co-authored the screenplay and the book and is thus owed half of what the book and DVD have earned. “The Secret” advocates the “law of attraction,” which claims that everybody always gets what they deserve because what you think about comes to you. Apparently Heriot and Byrne have been thinking a lot about giving money to lawyers. Byrne previously settled another legal case with “holistic healer” Vanessa Bonnette in Australia, and is facing two other lawsuits in the United States. Previous critiques of the utter nonsense that is “The Secret” may be found here. The fact that this claptrap has made so much money is a poor reflection on the gullibility and idiocy of far too many people on this planet. ...

There’s been a lot of commentary in the blogosphere about a January 3, 1954 letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind which contains the following statements: 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.and 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.Einstein expressed similar sentiments in a pair of letters he wrote on July 2, 1945 and September 28, 1949 to Ensign Guy H. Raner of the U.S.S. Bougainville which were first published in Skeptic magazine in 1997: From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere–childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of the world–as far was we can grasp it, and that is all. [July 2, 1945] and I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. [September 28, 1949] Einstein didn’t consider himself an atheist in the common usage of the term (his 1945 letter restricts the term to “from the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest”), though he was clearly comfortable being called an agnostic. He rejected the idea of a personal god, but was apparently willing to accept the possibility of Spinoza’s pantheistic god. UPDATE (May 14, 2008): ERV quotes this description of a statement by Oxford historian and theologian John Hedley Brooke, and describes it in a comment as “a ‘respected’ theologian lying to try to ‘keep him’” (emphasis hers): “Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him,” said Brooke. “It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions … but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.” Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." ...

Turkish creationist “Harun Yahya” (pseudonym for Adnan Oktar) has been sentenced to three years in prison for “creating an illegal organization for personal gain," according to Reuters: Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999. In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case. ...

Charlie Black, a senior advisor to the McCain campaign, lent his name to and helped arrange the bizarre March 23, 2004 event on Capitol Hill in which Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned King of America and declared himself to be the Messiah. Rev. Moon is a very powerful, wealthy man who has been regularly supported at public events by people such as former President George H. W. Bush and evangelical Christians like Tim and Beverly LaHaye (he helped found the Institute for Creation Research through his Christian Heritage College, co-author of Left Behind; she is the head of Concerned Women for America) and Jerry Falwell. Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute is a member of Moon’s Unification Church, which makes DI another organization where evangelical Christians join hands with members of Moon’s cult. Most of these people probably don’t agree with Moon’s nonsense, but they like his money and aren’t above prostituting themselves in order to receive some of it. UPDATE (May 13, 2008): More on Charlie Black, from FiretheLobbyists.com: Charlie Black, McCain’s senior counsel and spokesman, began his lobbying career by representing numerous dictators and repressive regimes ...

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about “Expelled."

John McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather. He won’t throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that’s showing tails instead of heads. He won’t take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first. He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet. He wears lucky shoes. He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win. John McCain is a superstitious nut.