Satanic haircuts

Iran has placed a ban on western style haircuts because they are against islamic values. Wow. An intire nation doomed to a bad hair due to islam.

Imam says 4 sentence prayer in Texas, sends christians in a tizzy

I am not in favor of legislative bodies praying at the beginning of sessions because it tends to set the self-righteous tone of 'god supports my cause.' The prayer thing happens all the time though. The self righteousness is unlikely to be the case if the prayer is lead by an islamic leader in a Texas room which has no islamic senators.
Pastors and senators showed how closed minded and completely not sanely based in reality their responses were to allowing an imam to say opening prayer on April 4th in the Texas legislature. One pastor had his panties in a bunch after hearing the 4 sentence prayer, "My spirit is so grieved after listening to a portion of the reading by the Islamic Imam. I could not finish listening because my heart was fully rejecting every word spoken. This was an imposter spirit, the spirit of the antichrist." If you don't like something call it satanic.

Burqavaganza

The Pakistan government stopped a theatre group from staging a satirical play about burqas under pressure from islamist lawmakers. "They have committed blasphemy against the Prophet (Mohammad)."

Lets beat a few ex-gays for a change

Some ex-gays are coming out of the closet against gays being included in a national hate crimes bill. Since the hate crimes bill is to protect gays from religious zelots (like the ex-gays) who think its ok to beat people just because they are different. Allowing the religious right input on hate crimes legislation is like letting the wolf guard the hen house. Why not let the KKK have input on civil rights legislation?

I hate to even acknowledge this one

Southern Methodist University held a conference "Darwin vs. Design." Roll eyes. Not again. If you repeat something often enough does that make it true? No, but it does make it truthiness.
I have to respond to the quote "He also said the theory of Intelligent Design is not faith-based." Show me one person who is not a superstitious mystic that would acknowledge anything credible about Intelligent Design because I want to talk to someone who doesn't keep falling back on the bible as a source.

Kill the wabbit

Three employees of bible publishers in Turkey were brutally killed and suspects have been arrested. A newspaper quoted a suspect as saying:
"We didn't do this for ourselves, but for our religion," Hurriyet newspaper quoted a suspect as saying. "Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion."

Curse of the spiderwoman

I have on a number of occasions in this blog asserted that religion is akin to belief in fairies and magic. If you doubt my assertion take a look at this analysis of christian curses by some Baptist minister. Apparently people who are not biblical descendants do not have curses because the bible doesn't mention other types of curses and therefore they don't exist.

The great sin

Pakistan's tourism minister is in hot water. She hugged a man. It doesn't matter who she hugged (did that man commit an "illegitimate act" too?), or that it was at a moment of after she had gone skydiving. She obviously isn't too islamic since pictures of her show her without a punjab, but now she is in danger from some religious fanatics. Nothing in my experience can help me understand how stupid islam is. I just can't wrap my head around it.

Barefoot and pregnant

There are allegations that Dr. Sheri Klouda was dismissed as a theology professor at Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary because of a change in the administrations position (when the president was replaced) to one that says "a woman should not instruct men in theology courses or in biblical languages." The case has not been proven in court but the quotes from the administration are pretty telling of their policy:
"I do not know of any women teaching in any of the SBC seminaries presently in the area of theology or biblical languages. In my estimation all of the seminaries have sought to be more consistent with most Southern Baptists' understanding of Scripture on the matter." The Baptist school is not denying the descrimination, they only claim that it is in their first amendment right to do so.
Christians often point a finger at the backwards treatment of women by Islam, but they have hardly cleaned out their own closets.

Is God poison?

An article in Macleans discusses some of the arguments of some modern well spoken atheists who have written books in the years since 9/11.

Uh oh, its magic!

A church in Ethiopia claims to be able to cure HIV/AIDS by baptising visitors with holy water. The catch is that visitors seeking a cure are not allowed to take antiretroviral drugs.