A Gallup poll released last summer suggested Americans are finally waking up to reality, although clearly they still have a long way to go. An article about this hopeful change in American thinking on Gallup’s website was titled, Belief in Five Spiritual Entities Edges Down to New Lows. Exciting as
Continue readingTag: Faith
Scripturient: Musings on Atheism, Belief, and Statues
The website godchecker.com lists roughly 4,000 “weird and wonderful Gods, Supreme Beings, Demons, Spirits and Fabulous Beasts” which have been worshipped since the beginning of recorded history. Many are still being worshipped. It’s quite an amusing and exhaustive collection of deities, demons, and demigods like saints. All gods and demons
Continue readingScripturient: That Fake War on Xmas
In my part of Canada the “war on Xmas” begins in September when some local box stores start putting Xmas ornaments and decorations out, sometimes just after Labour Day. By mid-October there are whole store sections dedicated to pushing gaudy, offshore-made, increasingly tacky lights and displays. Then the canned Xmas
Continue readingScripturient: Biblical Commandments the Pseudo-Christians Avoid
The Talibangelists (aka the Christofascists) like those on the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) or in the anti-abortion movement like to pretend they base their decisions, their politics, their morality, their education, their lives on their bible. But as we’ve seen so many times; they don’t like to follow
Continue readingScripturient: Blame Everything on Satan
Three people have so far died of COVID-19 after attending a “multi-day gathering of faith groups” in Nova Scotia. Public health officials said that, “in violation of public health orders,” none of the more than 100 attendees were asked to show proof of vaccination. And, the attendees went unmasked while
Continue readingScripturient: Are Secular Nations Happier?
Are less-religious or more secular nations happier than religious ones? Studies suggest yes. Personally, I would certainly be happier in a more secular nation if it meant fewer angry, nasty, fanatic believers like the Westboro Baptist congregation (see picture, right), or the faux-faith anti-mask/anti-vaccine, pro-disease protestors,* or any of the
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: BELONGING WHILE CAREGIVING: WHERE DO WE BELONG?
Photo by Geoffroy Hauwen on Unsplash In the trenches of caregiving, we can feel very, very alone. We may never experience a sense of belonging except in that tiny world of our loved one’s bedside (and possibly not even there). How can we feel belonging when our caring lives become
Continue readingScripturient: The Serpent Gets a Bad Rap
Why doesn’t anyone ever think of the serpent as humankind’s liberator instead of some villain who got us kicked out of Eden? Why does Eve take the blame for listening to the serpent instead of being considered another hero for taking a bold step to ensure our collective freedom? Okay,
Continue readingScripturient: Can an atheist be a good citizen?
The answer to the headline’s question is no, at least according to the late Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus in a podcast in the Socrates in the City series (Sept. 22, 2004; I came across it as one of the chapters in the 2012 book from the podcast, Life, God,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Faith, Hope & Love, During Difficult Times
Now is a time for faith. Or if you prefer, and perhaps more important yet: for perseverance, for patience, for forbearance, for resolve, for courage, for confidence, for sheer determination, for resiliency, or sisu (that beautiful Finnish word), or chutzpah – and for a long term perspective, as
Continue readingScripturient: The Ten Bulls
A series of ten Buddhist drawings make up what are known collectively as the Ten Oxherding Pictures or sometimes just as the Ten Bulls. Each one graphically illustrates a stage along the path to enlightenment or self-realization, but they can also be seen as a metaphor for a wider range
Continue readingScripturient: Why are American evangelical Christians so cruel?
The article in Forbes’ Magazine, March 11, didn’t ask that question I used in my headline. Instead, the headline simply stated the piece would explain, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel.” (The author later republished this on his own site under the less pointed title, “Why the Religious Right is
Continue readingScripturient: War for the Planet of the Apes considered
Pierre Boulle never imagined War for the Planet of the Apes, the latest film in the remade franchise. In fact, it would be fair to say the author of the original book never imagined any of the series, from the first in 1968 to the latest, released in 2017. They
Continue readingScripturient: Prayer isn’t stopping the violence
An acerbic piece in Maclean’s Magazine from June had the title “America’s mass delusion.” The subtitle read, “Surprisingly, the strategy of praying to God is not stopping the mass shootings in the U.S.” That piece was recirculated when the news of the latest and largest mass shooting in the USA
Continue readingScripturient: The Dude, the Tao and the Dharma
I suppose it all began with Benjamin Hoff. Hoff was one of the first contemporary writers to attempt to distill Taoism in a lighthearted form for Westerners when he wrote The Tao of Pooh in 1981, a very successful book still in print. It was on the New York Times
Continue readingScripturient: Ghostly claptrap
Does the Large Hadron Collider Actually Disprove Ghosts? That’s the question asked in a recent article posted on Gizmodo. Well, of course it doesn’t. The LHC doesn’t disprove invisible pink unicorns, either. It can’t disprove what doesn’t exist. No matter how many wingnut websites promise to reunite you with your
Continue readingScripturient: Empathy and The Dog Allusion
Empathy, writes Martin Rowson, is one of the things that make us human, make us civilized, allows us to interact without tearing one another’s throats out. Without it, we’d have no civilization; we’d be like the beasts of the fields. And we’d have no dogs or gods, either. Empathy is
Continue readingScripturient: TEOTWAWKI, New Year’s Eve
Some religious wingnuts aren’t planning to celebrate the ringing in of the New Year, 2017. Nope: they’re going to await the arrival of their zombie deity who, one can only suppose, will be bringing the champagne to his own party when he returns from the dead. The end of the
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