Things they would have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XXX

14 02 2009

The week in fundie:

  1. For starters, given that it was Darwin Day only a couple of days ago, here’s the idiot quote of the week from Australian Bishop Tom Frame:

    The problem I face is weariness with science-based dialogue partners like Richard Dawkins. It surprises me he is not chided for his innate scientific conservatism and metaphysical complacency. He won’t take his depiction of Darwinism to logical conclusions. A dedicated Darwinian would welcome imperialism, genocide, mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, eugenics, euthanasia, forced sterilisations and infanticide. Publicly, he advocates none of them. (Brisbane Times)

  2. In Irasburg, Vermont, a public school is being sued by two families after it was claimed that a schoolteacher proselytised in class, bought religious (including creationist) literature with school funds for dissemination in the classroom, and punished students who complained. (Times Argus)
  3. OMGTEHHOMOSEXUALAGENDACONTROLSTELEVISION!!!!!!!!!!!! World Net Daily shrieks hysterically about teh radical homosexual agenda to control your TV sets and convert your children to gay homosexuals. “Note” “their” “over-use” “of” “scare-quotes” “around” “the” “word” “gay,” “as” “if” “gays” “don’t” “really” “exist”—”even” “though” “they’ve” “just” “spent” “the” “whole” “article” “whining” “paranoiacally” “about” “them.” “Morons.”
  4. Meanwhile, in Australia, loving Christians are up in arms at the Victorian Police Commissioner’s plans to march in the Pride Festival. Article writer Peter Stokes, of Christian group Salt Shakers, quotes Peter Stokes, of Christian group Salt Shakers: “The normalisation of homosexuality by these people is a disgrace!” (Christianity Today)
  5. There have been more than 50 murders of suspected “witches” in Papua New Guinea over recent months, according to Times Online. One woman was burnt alive on a pyre of rubber tyres. Another woman escaped death when she began to give birth while hanging from a tree.
  6. In the Indian state of Bihar, eight members of a poor family were shot and beheaded after a family member married a wealthy girl. (UPI)
  7. Also in India, Hindu extremists who recently stormed a bar, dragging out women and beating them, have warned that they will attack anyone they catch celebrating Valentine’s Day. (Telegraph)
  8. Journalist Laurie Lebo takes a look at anti-Darwinism as a “peculiar American institution.” (Religion Dispatches)

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Categories : culture wars, evolution, fundies, GLBTI, homophobia, homosexuality, irrationalism, Religion, wingnuts

Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XIX

22 06 2008

The week in fundie . . .

  1. Religion as child abuse: members of a religious cult known as the Grail Movement kept a seven-year-old boy “chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat.” The Grail Movement makes the Manson family sound like the Hanson family: in 2000, its spiritual leader Jiří Adam “had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties.” Detectives compared the victims to Auschwitz inmates. (Via Pharyngula)
  2. Anti-gay activist and quack Paul Cameron is in Russia to support the local authorities’ crackdown on gay rights marches, and welcomes the embrace of his ideas by the sociology department at Moscow State University, a school which has

    distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.

    (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)

  3. The Bilerico Project reports on a gay rights supporter who collapsed at a demonstration outside San Francisco’s City Hall–to the cheers of a group of loving Christian anti-gay protestors, one of whom was chanting “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear?” (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars) Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories : GLBTI, Human rights, Magical Thinking, proto-fascism, Religion, science

Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XVIII

15 06 2008

The week in fundie:

  1. In Tanzania, albinos used to be the object of simple persecution, for much the same mindless and irrational reasons that such people would be ostracised anywhere in the world: because of their physical appearance. Now, because of a belief across Africa that albinos have magical powers, and because witchdoctors are promoting the belief that potions containing albino skin, bones and hair can make people wealthy, albinos are being hunted for their body parts. The New York Times reports one such case:

    The young are often the targets. In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives.Vumilia was like many other Africans with albinism. She had dropped out of school because of severe near-sightedness, a common problem for albinos, whose eyes develop abnormally and who often have to hold things like books or cellphones two inches away to see them. She could not find a job because no one would hire her. She sold peanuts in the market, making $2 a week while her delicate skin was seared by the sun.

    When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.

    “They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.

    The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died.

    The article also refers to the murder in Kenya of an albino woman, whose eyes, tongues and breasts were gouged out. This is where magical thinking can lead, people. It can lead to superstitious thugs breaking down the door of your house and hacking your children to death. (HT: Dogma Free America. See also The Standard.) Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Critical thinking, Democracy, Education, ethics, Human rights, Magical Thinking, Morons, proto-fascism, Religion

Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City VIII

15 02 2008

The week in fundie . . .

  1. In that jewel of civilisation known as Saudi Arabia, an illiterate woman who had a fingerprint-signed confession (which she couldn’t read) beaten out of her, has been sentenced to death by beheading. For witchcraft. (via Pharyngula)
  2. In Tonga, an elderly man accused of practising witchcraft has been hacked to death with bush knives. (News24)
  3. In KwaZulu-Natal, a seven-year-old boy was beheaded and his testicles removed, in what police suspect is a “muti killing” (where body parts are extracted for medicinal/witchcraft purposes). (News24)
  4. The Catholic Church in Poland is planning the construction of an “exorcism center,” after priests at the Institute for Studies on the Family “realized they needed an exorcist on staff after they encountered an increase in people suffering from evil.” (Sort of a “theo-epidemiology,” if you will. The article neglects to describe how exactly “evil” is measured.) (Catholic News Agency)
  5. In Rwanda, an 84-year-old Hutu man baptised himself as a Christian after a Hutu pastor refused to lay hands on him, accusing the man of betraying his tribe because of the role he played protecting Tutsis during the 1994 genocide. (via Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion) Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories : Human rights, Magical Thinking, Morons, Religion


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