Remember “limbo,” and all those unbaptised babies?

Babies to be freed from limbo

According to doctrine, they could not go to heaven because their original sin had not been expunged by baptism. Yet they had done nothing to harm anyone so they scarcely deserved purgatory, let alone hell. Limbo also proved a useful solution to other problems such as where to put holy people who lived before Christ and who also had no chance of baptism. [...] When he was still a cardinal, the present pope, Benedict, said he was in favour of dropping the concept so it is unlikely that the theologians will decide otherwise.

Now all we have to figure out is why God made them suffer for days, weeks, and months before killing them in horrible ways in the first place. But for all you lucky people who were worried about those unbaptised babies, you can rest easy now. They’re just fine. No, really.

Sounds like my kinda guy.

Mirecki’s e-mail was sent Nov. 19 to members of the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, a student organization for which he serves as faculty adviser.

During the weekend, Chancellor Robert Hemenway began a review of Mirecki’s e-mail, which resulted in Mirecki’s apology, issued Monday night. He called it “an ill-advised e-mail I sent to a small group of students and friends.”

It’s amazing the things that are dug up by local Albuquerque television news teams.

Congratulations go to Sean who wonderfully and recently summarized Scientology. This prescient move in lieu of this development will probably make our resident Xian fundie commenters breathe a sigh of relief as we proceed to mock the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta (I can imagine their reactions to this “Wait… I changed my mind!”).

The writing of a mediocre Sci-Fi novelist engraved by Scientologists on “stainless steel tablets and encasing them in titanium capsules” while sinking them “…deep in these New Mexico hills in steel-lined tunnels, said to be able to survive a nuclear blast…. stored in heat-resistant titanium boxes and playable on a solar-powered turntable, all containing the beliefs of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.” I can only fear that these will be the only remnants of humanity that survive our extinction and that aliens, far more advanced than we, will land on Earth, find the tablets, and then chortle at our onetime existence.

I would like to comment further on said issue; however, having ruptured my spleen from the pressure of laughing so hard, I must now get to the local hospital. Please, someone, continue the mockery for me.

Via Skeptico I came across this hillarious website. They totally put the “fun” in Fundies!

The site basically takes the “best” of Xian forums and posts them categorically. Skeptico points out his favorite:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

Umm…right. It wouldn’t have anything to do with that big ball of flame in the sky, would it?

Fundamentalism = 3,000,000 B.C.E knowledge.

Christian Right freaks out over doll companies’ connections to reproductive health issues

Snippets:

Tracie and Richard Cross have four daughters, who have seven American Girl dolls between them…

… “Girls Inc.,” one mother warned, “is pro-abortion and pro-contraception and pro all the other lies the secular world wants our girls to believe.”

Yes, we know those lying secularists will try to convince our innocent little girls that when they have sex in just a few years (which they will, folks… especially if you make it something you never talk about in any kind of healthy way at home), condoms — those foul, Satanic creations that prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis and gonorrhea and syphilis, not to mention unwanted teenage pregnancy — will protect them better than a good, old-fashioned screaming from the pulpit about abstinence! What evil, evil lies those secularists tell!

And what’s it like being married to someone who is actually anti-contraceptive? Is it like in Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life” when Eric Idle says: “I mean, we’ve got two children, and we’ve had sexual intercourse twice”?

I liked this part:

For now, American Girl, which grossed $379 million in sales last year, is standing by its commitment to Girls Inc. Meanwhile, the group is enjoying a surge in donations, says Roche. If the boycott has had any real impact on sales, it was not noticeable at American Girl Place in Chicago last week. It was as bustling as ever.

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The issue of mobile communication and etiquette has also become 6015i nokia ringtones of academic interest.

Churches send in the faithful to put Narnia on map

CHURCH leaders are encouraging families to see The Chronicles of Narnia over Christmas because of the new Disney film’s Christian message. The Walt Disney organisation has appointed Christian Publishers and Outreach, an evangelistic publishing company, to promote the Christian message behind the story in churches across Britain. [...] The church has also set up a website aslanisJesus.co.uk to promote the Christian message of the film described as “Passion of Christ for kids”. [...] A Methodist spokesman said: “Churches are encouraged to explore this theme by engaging with the journey of Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan, as through the wardrobe, they enter a world of ice and snow where it is always winter, but never Christmas. Congregations are asked to consider what the world would be like if Christmas never came and are reminded of the importance of the gift we are given at Christmas, past, present and future.”

What would it be like “if xmas never came?” Umm, maybe just ask people who aren’t xian?

Just so it doesn’t seem that all we ever do it berate and belittle the people of the lord, I offer the following rerun from last year, about Thanksgiving and reflective appreciation.

As an atheist who doesn’t celebrate either Xmas or any of the mini-pseudo-Xmases, I still do embrace Thanksgiving. It’s the American holiday of home and hearth; and in spite of the name, a holiday where religious content seems — quite rightly — utterly optional. Lots of people take the opportunity to give literal thanks to their own flavor of imaginary friend; but the generic heart of the idea of thankfulness for the good things in your life seems pretty independent of whether you think that there’s anybody or thing to whom thanks are due.

Of course, you can be thankful to other people — like parents, friends, teachers, etc. — for things they’ve done. But there is a more generic notion of thankfulness or gratitude or something that is hard to say in the language we have without expressions that imply some agent as the one you’re thanking.

Surely the inclination to be reflectively appreciative of the good things in life — many of which are due to the random chaos of the world, like not being born into abject poverty, or having children who are by and large healthy, and so on — is an inclination that seems like a fine and healthy part of our human flourishing. I don’t think it should be cast aside just because some of the more obvious ways to state the impulse (”thankful”, “grateful”) are ones that seem to imply on the surface an agent who’s being thanked, or to whom gratitude is being given.

I’d be happy to have better ways to say it. (Suggestions?) But “being thankful” isn’t so horrible. (After all, I can believe that Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth without thinking that there is a fountain of youth that he sought, can’t I? Just be careful with your “quantifying in”.) Just take the time to reflect upon and appreciate and feel grateful — to nobody, everybody, and the chaos of existence, maybe — for all your good fortune. Enjoy your turkey — and the other good things of your lives.

Happy T-day, everybody.swap credit default 360 actualcardizem actos aciphex cd tramadoland levitra 1cialisringtones sec 30tramadol 00 4groove hammer adams mp3 mcringtone 300 treoaan agcode tramadol Map