Here we go again, folks. On May 27, 2012 the world is fated to end in flames, but it’s not the Mayan calendar that’s predicting it, nor has last year’s failed prophetHarold Campingredone his calculations. No, this time the prediction comes from the divinely-inspired revelations of Ronald Weinland, prophet and leader of theChurch of God-PKG(Preparing for the Kingdom of God).

Weinland, who is predicting that “the United States will collapse” and that there will be a nuclear war before May 27th, claims he “is the pastor of God’s Church on earth, has also been appointed by the God of Abraham to be His end-time prophet and one of the two end-time witnesses (and spokesman of both), preceding the return of Jesus Christ on May 27, 2012.”

Yay, the world is coming to an end, again. This time it will be through a nuclear holocaust. Mmmmmmmm…. can’t wait!

Maybe I frequent the wrong websites, but I see far more debates in which atheists are pitted against the faithful, or creationists against evolutionists, than those in which the faithful debate each other.  That is, do we ever see liberal theologians like John Haught debate conservative ones like William Lane Craig about whose idea of God isright? Why not pit a Muslim versus a Christian to argue whether Jesus was the son of God? Or a Catholic versus a Christian to argue about hell and morality?

Maybe these things take place, but I doubt that they do with the frequency of the faith-vs.-nonbelief debates. (I’m willing to admit I’m wrong if I’ve missed tons of stuff.)

But if religion/religion debates are infrequent, why is that? Because, I think, religious people realize that by attacking someone else’s superstition, they undermine their own.  By exposing the lack of evidence for the other guy’s faith, you inadvertently expose the lack of evidence for your own. That, after all, is what John Loftus’sOutsider Test for Faithis about. Even liberal theologians usually avoid direct attacks on other faiths, for they know intuitively that no matter what you call it, revelation is still revelation, and it ultimately comes down to stuff that you make up because you like the way it makes you feel.

Still, it would afford me hours of delight to see a Muslim argue with a Christian about whose faith was right.

by whyevolutionistrue

Fascinating question brought up by Jerry Coyne (Author of “Why Evolution is True) on his blog, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. To give a short answer to his query, I imagine religions do not tend to debate each other because those debates soon dissolve into mindless bloodbaths. Voices of reason are soon drowned out by swish of blades and the screams of the faithful as their limbs are parted from their bodies. Lets just look at the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, both Christian groups sharing the same essential tenets and yet unable to abstain from the blood letting that each side felt was necessary to prove a point to the other.

fuckyeahsexeducation:

I have no problem with circumcision so long as the choice is freely consented to.  People circumcising babies and children without their consent is seriously fucked up, it’s unacceptable in every way possible.  All people deserve the right to choose what does and does not happen with their own bodies and that include all people with penises in reference to their foreskins.  Considering that there’s no legitimate evidence out there that circumcising penises is a positive thing while there’s tons of evidence of all the negative consequences to circumcising penises I find it greatly disturbing that people are willing to justify and defend forcing people to have the operation without their knowledge or consent for cosmetic and/or cultural reasons.

On a related note there’s this theory out there about circumcision that the real reason it’s so pervasive in our society is because the “offending” parts are ambiguous.  The clitoris is reminiscent of the penis while the foreskin is reminiscent of the labia.  Having “feminine” parts on a penis or “masculine” parts on a vagina makes the genitalia ambiguous and creates unease with the sexual and gender binaries which people are so uncomfortable with that they feel the need to surgically alter all people’s bodies to make them less ambiguous and more binary.  It’s just a theory but I think it’s a pretty interesting one, especially considering how overtly misogynistic American society is while at the same time loving all things masculine.  In this context it seems reasonable for people to be fine with vulvae having “masculine” parts but not ok for penises to have “feminine” parts which could explain why many Americans see female circumcision as “barbaric” but see nothing wrong with male circumcision (or even consider it to be important, necessary, etc).

Really fascinating point, it never would have occurred to me. Men are circumcised in order to get rid of genital ambiguity, well I never.