Hehehe. It’s funny cause it’s true. (and I love the fact that I just put “What Would Jesus Do?” and “NSFW” in the same title)

(via Friendly Atheist)

I’ve finally gotten around to reading the excerpt published from Matt Taibbi’s new book, The Great Derangement, documenting his infiltration of Pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church and his experience at one of the church’s Evangelical “Encounter Weekends.” The entire story really is a terrifying look at the massive, orchestrated con job that is megachurch evangelical Christianity.

I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I’d spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio — anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.

There was an old-fashioned white school bus in front of the church entrance, with a puddle of heavyset people milling around its swinging door. Some of these were carrying blankets and sleeping bags. My heart, already pounding, skipped a few extra beats. The church circulars had said nothing about bringing bedding. Why did I need bedding? What else had I missed?

“Excuse me,” I said, walking up to an in-charge-looking man with a name tag who was standing near the front of the bus. “I see everyone has blankets. I didn’t bring any. Is this going to be a problem?”

The man was about five feet one and had glassy eyes. He looked up at me and smiled queerly.

“Name?” he said.

“Collins,” I said. “Matthew Collins.”

He scanned his clipboard, found my name on the appropriate sheet of paper, and X-ed me out with a highlighter. “Don’t worry, Matthew,” he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “A wonderful woman named Martha is going to take care of you at the ranch. You just tell her what you need when you get there.”

I nodded, glancing at his hand, which was still on my shoulder. He waved me into the bus.

I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone — a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country — to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush. The church’s pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country — not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.

Continue reading

I totally need to get one of these. Hell, if he can build one that can solve linear systems of differential equations I’ll have to get one airmailed here by Thursday.

(via Greg Laden)

It’s 1:00am as I begin this post. I’m 693 words into a 1000 word essay, due, of course, tomorrow afternoon, and I’m stuck. So, what do I decide to do but go write something else. I’m annoyed that I haven’t been able to post much of anything lately, but as I said in an earlier update, finals begin next week, and the workload this week was kind of ridiculous. I’ve actually been churning some thoughts over in my head over the past few weeks, and I’d like to get some of them down on (cyber)paper. I kind of feel like just typing them out right now, but I know if I do that it’ll be two 1000 word essays in one night, and then I’ll likely be up til five in the morning. I’ll probably just be posting whatever funny or relevant images or videos I run across in my limited free time over the next few days, although I may have a really huge announcement early next week (fingers crossed), but I don’t want to get my hopes up too much.

Alright, sufficient time wasted…now it’s time to somehow come up with 300 more relevant words…

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
by Sam Harris

Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world’s most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna (”strife” in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders’ right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of “religious sensitivity.”

Witness the free world’s response to Fitna: The Dutch government sought to ban the film outright, and European Union foreign ministers publicly condemned it, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Dutch television refused to air Fitna unedited. When Wilders declared his intention to release the film over the internet, his U.S. web-host, Network Solutions, took his website offline.

I don’t mean to make this blog just a surrogate for TED, but when I come across a great talk, I just feel I have to share. Below is an incredibly moving talk by eminent physicist and pioneer of quantum computing, David Deutsch about the place humanity enjoys in the cosmos, and how we are simultaneously an insignificant spec of “chemical scum” and the hub of all existence.

from www.ted.com

I stumbled across this in the comments at Friendly Christian and just had to share. The LOLcat Bible Translation Project is working towards the momentous goal of translating the entire Bible into lolcat speak. They are currently 61% complete. This is absolutely hilarious.

The LHC is due to come online this summer, and it’s got the entire world of physics waiting on the edge of its proverbial seat. Here Brian Cox (British rocker turned particle physicist) explains in terms for the general public just what the LHC is all about and why it’s so important. This is truly an awesome talk.

from www.ted.com

(via The Bad Astronomer)

Yup, it’s that time of the semester. Finals start in just over a week, so you probably won’t see me around here much in the next two weeks. After that though I should have a little more free time and will be able to blog more often.

Oh, the irony.