Skepticum

The post-Christmas days have been filled with news of conflict, from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to a less noticeable story, but a very entertaining one nonetheless:

Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. (breitbart.com) … For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.

The Church of the Nativity is physically divided into sections administered by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities respectively. Any encroachment into another’s space can result into conflict.

During the pre-Christmas cleaning yesterday, a Greek Orthodox priest placed a ladder into Armenian territory and the brawl ensued.

The Orthodox church of Jerusalem celebrates Christmas based on the old Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used worldwide today. In the Julian calendar Christmas falls on Jan. 7, thus the pre-Christmas cleaning.

Seeing that the spirit of Christmas had not seeped yet into the hearts of the Church of Nativity Keepers, Palestinian policemen stepped in to keep the peace.

Let me repeat that, Palestinians had to separate fighting Christians.

Tags: Christmas, church, nativity, orthodox, Religion

Sound Off’s Roland S. Martin wrote a commentary on CNN.com today in which he claims,

Because of all the politically correct idiots, we are being encouraged to stop saying “Merry Christmas” for the more palatable “Happy Holidays.” What the heck are “Seasons Greetings”? (…)

But this seeming backlash against Christianity is bordering on the absurd, and we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.

What is disturbing about paranoid rants such as Martin’s is that he’s making arguments that are unfriendly (when people say Happy Holidays they’re backlashing against Christianity) and unsupported (Jesus is the reason for the season).

When people say Happy Holidays they actually try to be nice and not make assumptions about one’s religion. If I know someone is Christian I have no issues saying Merry Christmas, but when I don’t know, or when I know someone is not Christian I’d rather wish them Happy Holidays than nothing at all. Of course I could come up with something more creative, such as “Happy Winter Time Off!”

To use Martin’s own linguistic choices I must say you have to be an idiot to claim that Jesus is the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for the celebration of Christmas as in “the mass of Christ,” the birth of jesus, but he is certainly not the reason why people throughout centuries have celebrated this time of year.It is common knowledge that the Christmas traditions are borrowed from a number of pagan celebrations such as the Northern European Yule and the Roman Saturnalia.

Decorated fir-trees, gift giving, mistletoe, holly, carol singing etc. are all traditions predating Christianity.

So if how we celebrate is a collection of pre-Christian traditions, and what we celebrate is highly varied based on religion why would saying Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays be an attack on Christianity?

Tags: , atheism, Christmas, holidays, Religion, saturnalia, yule

I was following a Yahoo Answers! discussion on whether or not it is bad to give cash as a gift for Christmas. The two main reasons against giving cash were:

1. Cash is impersonal, it’s more thoughtful to pick out a gift for someone

2. If you give a certain amount to someone it creates the expectation that they should give the same to you.

Today I got a card with cash in it, and I thought it was the coolest thing. My teeth are about to fall off from all the candy canes people have been dropping off for me so the cash was actually more personal than impersonal. And the fact that my friend did not worry about me feeling pressured to give a gift of same value to her makes it even cooler.

Here’s to the best gift I got this season:

Tags: Christmas, friendship, gifts, Religion

Americans don’t often get to hear the realities of public health care in other parts of the world, even with the recent debate on universal health care.

Pajamas media reported today that according to UNICEF Romania holds the leading position in child mortality rates, and mothers’ birth-related deaths in the developing world. The costs of universal health care in Romania range from lives lost to underground cash economies where bribing doctors and nurses is the rule without guarantee of good care:

In some hospitals, patients are required to bring their own cotton pads or needles, food is mostly provided by caring relatives, rooms are overcrowded, hygiene is poor. The daily bribe for a nurse is around $40, a surgeon might ask you for $500 or more to perform an intervention. Although employees pay 6.5% of their income and employers another 6% to the public health insurance, the Romanian health care system is grossly underfinanced. While other European countries spend 7-8% of their GDP for health care, Romania only dedicates 3.5% of a much lower GDP ($257 billion).

Not surprisingly, Romanians see the only solution in the private sector:

In this grim picture, the only hope comes from the growing privatization of the medical sector. Although still chaotic and fragmented, the private market is growing faster than in neighboring Bulgaria or Hungary, where public services are better and thus the need for private alternatives less stringent.

Interesting how in one part of the world we see the solution in universal health care, and in Romania some see the solution in private health care. I guess when it comes to death or life situations humans prefer to pay and have some assurance of good care, than not pay at all and play Russian roulette with their lives.

It certainly reminds us that when talking about health care cost is not the only issue, and quality of care, and industry regulation also play a critical roles.

Tags: health, international, policy, Politics

Walking home this evening I had one of the best laughs of the week when I noticed the Christmas Story leg lamp in a window. I was looking from window to window noticing the colorfully lit Christmas trees. After a few windows I expected yet another tree, but found instead this:

Tags: , Christmas, movies

Especially, less violence against women.

I cringe at all forms of violence in the name of religion, be they psychological, or infringements upon personal liberties. I cannot find anything moral or any virtue in teaching children that they must obey a fictional character such as Jesus, or in teaching little girls that their purpose in life is to grow up, marry, obey their husbands and make babies.

But, I can accept that adults may believe in the god of their choice. I can accept that some find comfort in the placebo of religion.

But the brutality some unleash in the name of religion is sickening:

“Khalaf [Iraqi Police chief Maj. Gen] said bodies have been found [in Basra] in garbage dumps with bullet holes, decapitated or otherwise mutilated with a sheet of paper nearby saying, “she was killed for adultery,” or “she was killed for violating Islamic teachings.” In September, he said, the headless bodies of a woman and her 6-year-old son were among those found. He said a total of 40 deaths were reported this year.

“We believe the number of murdered women is much higher, as cases go unreported by their families who fear reprisal from extremists,” he said.”

(International Herald Tribune,  “Police chief in southern city of Basra says religious vigilantes have killed 40 women this year,” Dec. 9, 2007)

Of course, this news is no news, as these stories have surfaced more and more recently. Also, there are plenty organization who deal with violence against women, and some even take a look at the interplay of religion and violence against women.

And then we have those who simply don’t get it, such as conservative Phyllis Schlafly who claims that if the US adopted an International Violence Against Women act it would diminish the benefits that American women enjoy, because:

U.S. women are the most privileged class of people on the face of the earth. That’s because we are the beneficiaries of the Judeo-Christian civilization, including the requirement in the Ten Commandments to honor mothers and the Christian religion that honors the Virgin Mary and respects women.

Schlafly’s words are in line with all other tyrants’ ideas that their regime is good and just, and as a result there can’t be any violence within the confines of their establishment.

Another view religious folk take on the issue of religion and violence is that church teachings themselves are not the perpetrators of violence but rather how people interpret religious teachings and choose to act.

The National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women published an article co-written by a reverent and a rabi, that promotes the idea that religious leaders should receive training on how to deal with victims of violence, and secular advocates should have training on how to address religious issues. The article faults religion only for “roadblocks” to handling violence.

So far so good. But they take the issue a step further and state,

Training for advocates should include addressing the religious concerns that women may present and how to make appropriate referrals to religious resources.

Once again, the assumption is that the particular teachings of that religion are not the source of the problem, and the problem can be treated from within the jurisdiction of that religious group.

Certain religious, such as the Mormon church, discourage consulting with psychiatrists or psychologists outside of those recommended by the church leaders themselves.

In reality, if the religious source is the problem, referring the victim back to the perpetrator may not be an option. It would be similar to sending the wife for counseling with the mother of the perpetrator– odds are the victim will get the blame.

Also, if the religious leader has similar opinions with Schlafly, referring the victim back to the religion may result in the amplification of the problem. If the violence is stemming from the religious group itself, yet the religious group leaders are refusing to recognize violence issues within their religion the claims of violence will just be written off and the victim will be pushed back into the circle of violence.

While there are many who appear to present solutions that take respect for religion into consideration, there are very few solutions that accept religion as the perpetrator. Is it time to rethink where to turn for help?

Tags: atheism, islam, Religion, violence, women

Pets of Christian families who choose to go with Dr. Dobson’s list of where not to shop for Christmas will be left out in the cold this winter. Petsmart is listed on Dobson’s “The Bad” list and PetCo committed an even more serious crime on Christmas and was listed on “The Ugly” list of stores Christians shouldn’t shop at.

Why is he boycotting these stores? Because Jesus wouldn’t shop there either, after the stores shifted their focus from Christmas to The Holidays.

“The Bad”(Best Buy and Borders etc.) and “The Ugly” (the GAP family of stores, Barnes and Noble, eBay, Discovery Channel Store, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and other), “depend on the Christmas season to generate a high percentage of their profits for the year, and yet they want to do it by distancing themselves from the traditional Christmas story,” according to Dobson.

How deluded do you have to be to think that the stores who use the term “Christmas” in their ads have a different goal in mind than profit. If retailers had data to show that their neutral holiday language was going to drive Christians away from their stores, they would use Christmas instead. All retailers are focused on revenue and based on their customer profile they know what language would work best with the customer without endangering their revenue.

Best Buy, Borders and Barnes and Noble were quoted for their “no-solicitation policy.” In other words, they don’t allow those dudes in funny outfits to shout Merry Christmas and expect donations for it. That was their big crime on Christmas.

However, if you want to do a charity thing this Holiday season, I encourage you to stop by Borders (”The Bad”) and donate to help with children’s literacy, or buy something from the (RED) campaign at one of the GAP stores (”The Ugly”).

Tags: atheism, charity, christian, Christmas, red, shopping

I got tagged by Ben to talk about myself… again. My earlier post with 8 things about me listed some very random things.

The rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.
5. 8 is a magic number. Not three.

Here are some more totally random things about me:

1. I love Charles David shoes, and this one here is my newest purchase.

2. I have an opera season pass.

3. I go alone.

4. I used to work with homeless folk with mental illness and substance abuse problems and I support the treatment philosophy of harm reduction. I have great respect for all the social workers, mental health workers, case managers who bust their asses on the tiniest pay imaginable, to keep people off the streets and out of harm’s way.

5. Being that it’s December I have to say I support HIV awareness programs. Everyone should read POZ Magazine.

6. I speak 5 languages, but it doesn’t mean anything, except that growing up I was exposed to 5 so I had no choice… they stuck. However, I can only write well in 1.

7.  I mostly only listen to grunge music.

8.  I love Chicago. It’s gotta be the most corrupt city in the US but somehow it survives as the big city with the small town feel.

I’m only going to tag 4 other:

Shalini

Dawn

Homar

DiVerL

Romney discussed his candidacy and religion today,…. sort of. He mostly made numerous vague statements and managed to brush off comparisons of Mormonism to other Christian groups.

The most rhetorically shrewd part of his address was his mention of freedom:

“Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

In other words, you cannot be truly free without religion.

Mormonism prescribes many of these “cannot without religion”–you cannot be truly happy, you cannot be truly free, etc.

Here’s how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints views freedom, in the words of LDS General Authority, Elder Enzio Busche:

My dear brothers and sisters, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, many new members, specifically when they come from countries other than the United States, learn for the first time the true dimension of the word freedom. Freedom for most people of the world means “freedom from” the absence of malice or pain or suppression. But the freedom that God means when He deals with us goes one step further. He means “freedom to”—the freedom to act in the dignity of our own choice.

Let me summarize this point. Non-Mormons, new Mormons and especially foreigners who are new to the church don’t get the whole truth about freedom.  These folk know what they may be free from but not what they’re “free to.” The probability is that American Mormons who are not new to the church know about freedom best.

It’s this concept of “free to” that appears in Romney’s quote as well when he says, “Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God.” But do not be led to think that by “act in the dignity of our own choice,” they mean that we can do whatever we choose. The word dignity is there for a good purpose, and it’s tied in with Jesus Christ (as you will see below).

Also don’t be fooled into thinking that the mighty genius of Romney come up with this concept. The Mormon church has numerous writings on this topic. Here is how freedom to and freedom of choice are defined by Mormons, in the words of the same LDS General Authority, Elder Enzio Busche:

As we open our hearts to the message of God’s truth, as it was restored in our time, we begin to understand why there was, and still is, so much misery, pain, suffering, and even starvation. In the same dimension as we are learning to accept the revealed truth in our own life, our faith in the living Son of God will grow, and therefore we will receive spiritual gifts of heretofore unknown capacity. We will learn that nothing is impossible for those who believe in Jesus Christ. False bondages will be loosened. Narrow thinking born in tragedies of false traditions will disappear.

In conclusion, Romney’s words are almost perfectly in line with his church’s teachings that one cannot be truly free without Jesus Christ, because only religion can open one’s soul to allow communion with God, and release the bondages false traditions keep us under.

For example, if you have a glass of wine with your meal you are not truly free because you allow a false tradition to bond you. If you choose to express your love for someone of the same sex you are not truly free because you chose to bond yourself in something ungodly.

If Romney replaced Jesus Christ in his speech with a generic term of “religion” he did it for political reasons only.

He said, “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers — I will be true to them and to my beliefs.”

So, if he is to be true to his beliefs he would have to say that Jesus Christ brings freedom (to) , however, that would exclude all other non-Jesus religions from being able to bring freedom (to).

My final conclusion is that Romney is throwing empty, yet Mormon-influenced rhetorical language hoping to create some “ethos of Romney” and convince the religious folk of America that he’s a freedom and religion loving guy, and he’s non-threatening and he just only sees the similarities in people, not the differences.

The notion that freedom and religion can’t exist one without the other is a fabrication stemming from his church’s moral teachings. And his church’s teachings are nothing but an attempt to manipulate the concept of freedom of choice, by saying that Jesus gives one the freedom to choose what Jesus says is right, and that’s the only true freedom.

Tags: feedom, Mormon, Politics, Religion, Romney

Tags: snow, winter

 Novelist John Scalzi published a fantastic write-up of a tour at the Creation Museum. He promptly summarized the museum as “An epic load of horseshit,” after which he discusses both why it’s horseshit and why the museum is popular with those who can consume such horseshit:

 ”The Museum is casually trying to establish an equivalence between science and creationism by accrediting them both as legitimate “starting points” for any discussion of biology, geology and cosmology. This would cause any scientist worth his or her salt to have a positively cinematic spit take, because it’s horseshit, but if you don’t know any better (say, if you’ve been fed a line of crap your whole life along the lines of “science is just another religion”) it sounds perfectly reasonable. And so if you buy that, then the next room, filled with large posters that offer on equal footing the creationist and scientific takes on the creation of the universe and evolution, seems perfectly reasonable, too: Heck, we can both have our theories! They’re both okay. The problem with this is that creationism isn’t a theory, it’s an assertion, to wit: The entire universe was created in six days, the days are 24-hour days, the layout for the creation and for the early history of the planet and humanity is in the first chapter of Genesis and it is exactly right. Everything has to be made to conform to these assertions, which is why creationist attempts at science are generally so damn comical and refutable. “

Scalzi’s visit followed a “Drag Scalzi’s Ass to the Creation Museum” donation drive with proceeds going to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

Tags: church, creationism, evolution, Religion, science

The word in music circles these days is that the new EXODUS album, “The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibition A,” attacks organized religion.

Gary Holt, the EXODUS guitarist said on the “The Classic Metal Show” (hinting to the Mohammed Teddy Bear story):

But I have decided that the next rabbit that my snake eats will be named “Mohammed” before I feed it to my snake. I’m going to capture it on film, and I’m going to post it on the Internet so everybody can watch “Mohammed” going down my snake’s throat. Then I will film the shit that my snake lays and point out that that is the remnants of “Mohammed.”

I hope he puts it on YouTube because I’d like to see that. I fear that Holt may get into trouble with PETA before he gets the Islamic death threat he talks about in the rest of the interview.

If there was a celebrity death match for organizations and PETA and some Islamic terrorist organization went head to head, who do you think would win?

Tags: islam, music, Religion