Jesus Camp

Cameron mentioned this movie, Jesus Camp, in his comment. Haven't seen it yet but it looks very interesting. I was out of town when it came here but the uni library has ordered the DVD. (Assuming I don't just buy it.)

I like the comment at the beginning, "There's two kinds of people in the world: people who love Jesus and people who don't." It's just so true. I really like dichotomies so I'll have to add it to my list along with "You either love liquorice or you hate it." I just wonder whether she realises that Muslims also love Jesus (as a prophet, they just don't think he was the son of God).

Update - 30th January

There's another doco coming out on HBO soon, called "Friends of God". There's another clip from the doco available here featuring the Australian Creationist Ken Ham, one of the most famous Young Earth Creationists around today. (His creationist propaganda centre in Queensland shut up shop around the time of Sir Joh's fall from grace. Ham then headed to the greener pastures of Kentucky where he is currently building a Creation Museum. N.B. Unlike those other Young Earth Creationists, he doesn't call it "Creation Science", which is far more honest.)

Even better, another clip featuring Ted Haggard, claiming that Evangelical Christians have more sex than anyone else. He sounded like he was talking about men having sex with their wives but, as we now know, what he really meant was married men having sex with male prostitutes while snorting meth.

Doonesbury on Creationism

A new one:


And an old one:


And while we're at it, another one by someone else:

This last one's a bit ironic because I'm currently employed reconstructing alchemy experiments!

Labels

We do not have a term for a person who rejects astrology, nor do we need one. If legions of astrologers sought to bend our public policy to their pseudo-science, we wouldn’t need to dub ourselves “non-astrologers” to put them in their place. Words like “reason,” “evidence,” and “commonsense” would suffice. So it should be with religion.
Sam Harris

Once Lara asked me, in front of a room full of Christians, whether I was an atheist or an agnostic. I answered "atheist" because I was using Bertrand Russell's "for all intents and purposes" definition of atheism, which allows for philosophical agnosticism.

I still agree with Russell Hanson's objection to agnosticism as a non-position. So, if someone pushed me on the distinction, I'd want to argue that atheism can be used in a weak sense as a contrast to polytheism and monotheism, ie that I worship zero gods.

But, overall, I agree with Sam Harris. It's easier to just omit the labels altogether. I've never been one to write "atheist" under "other religion"; I'm much happier to just tick "none". (Although it's always tempting to write "Jedi"!)