Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

I’ve been busy with the day job lately, hence the lack of posts, but I just had to share this post over at Pharyngula. Check it out – and see if you can come up with an appropriate caption (I imagine there will be quite a few takes on ’second coming’ and ’suffer the children’). This has to be about the most inappropriate representation of Jesus I’ve ever seen – and presumably it was designed to sell to the faithful. Ah well, plenty of people get excited about Jesus, it’s nice to see him getting excited too.

If you are British, and think that government delegating its job to faith-based organisations is a problem limited to our American cousins, think again. The UK Government is increasingly using faith-based outfits to do jobs that should be entirely secular in nature. Now the god botherers are targeting prisons.

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The resurrected controversy about the alleged Lost Tomb of Jesus raises an interesting paradox: are Christians better served by a mythological Jesus? Might discoveries about the real existence of Jesus undermine their faith?

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After the death of Jesus, any number of sects emerged with him as their figurehead. So why did all but one fail and only Paul’s church succeed? The answer is, good marketing.

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Pope Benedict XVI has had to cancel a visit to Rome’s leading university over suggestions that he approved of the church’s treatment of Galileo. The truth, as always, is somewhat murkier, but perhaps it’s just as well. Popes and science are not a good mix.

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Once programmed by the self-loathing rituals of religion, can you ever be truly happy? Guilt, low self-esteem and a permanent sense of inadequacy are integral components of many religions. And maybe when they’ve got you, they’ve got you for ever.

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In Japan, interest in Buddhism is waning so fast that not even bar-crawling monks can spark a revival. As with many other religions, people like the ceremony, but aren’t so fussed about the supernatural nonsense that goes with it.

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A senior executive of Barclaycard Europe has had to leave his job after making a bad joke that happened to include a religious term. It seems that, when it comes to sensitivity about religion, the rule is ‘zero tolerance’.

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Who’d have thought Bill Maher would have had such a negative view of the Republican party’s religious nutjobs. Certainly opened my eyes.

A murderer, who may have eaten part of his victim, now says that god told him to do it. How do we know whether this is true? And if he’s lying, why does he think this is a good thing to say?

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