U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn't successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.
In a culture which uses sexuality to sell products to people starting at ages as low as ten (Thanks, Disney) it's not at all shocking that abstinence programs fail. The mixed signals kids get from the media regarding the power and allure of sex and their parents who tell them sex is something you should wait to do is not a healthy sexual environment for anyone involved. Pair this with the typical fundamentalist religious reaction to sex - that it's evil and sinful - turns sex itself into a taboo which most teenagers find fascinating. Just say no doesn't work and abstaining for god obviously isn't working either. The one thing that religion does seem to effectively keep kids from doing is having sex intelligently - by using contraception:
However, the results don't say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."
Ahh, but I can hear the religious nuts now claiming that this study is skewed because kids on less religious states could be getting pregnant just as much if not MORE than religious states, they're just running around having abortion parties to dump their irresponsibly begotten babies so they can go out and have more heathenish orgies. Well, no. Thankfully, the study accounted for abortions and while abortions were higher in less religious states, accounting for those did nothing to change the outcome of the study.
For instance, the results showed more abortions among teenagers in the less religious states, which would skew the findings since fewer teens in these states would have births. But even after accounting for the abortions, the study team still found a state's level of religiosity could predict their teen birth rate. The higher the religiosity, the higher was the teen birth rate on average.
John Santelli of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University calls the study "well-done," adding that the results are not surprising.
"The index of religiosity is tapping into more fundamentalist religious belief," Santelli said. "I'm sure there are parts of New England that have very low teen birth rates, which have pretty high religious participation, but they're probably less conservative, less fundamentalist type of congregations."
And that right there says it all, doesn't it? I would wager that moderate or liberal religious groups are far less likely to do such a good job of denouncing contraception while doing such a terrible job at denouncingsexual activity. It makes perfect sense that this would be a fundamentalist issue - they have to keep their numbers up somehow.
In Minneapolis for the Religion Newswriters Association annual conference, I asked two members of the White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships about the ongoing question of the first family finding a local church. It's about the children, is basically what both the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president-elect of the National Council of Churches, and the former Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page answered.This woman talks about Christian community as if Christians have a special kind of social structure that can't be found anywhere else but church. That may be true in regard to indoctrination, but otherwise anything you get from socializing at church you can attain by alternative means. Volunteering at a food bank or pet shelter, participating in community sports, even going to a park on any given day will expose your child to the same kind of community you find at church. Christians do not have any kind of monopoly on social interaction beyond proselytizing their own specific beliefs. It ends there.
"How will the children have a sense of Christian community?'' asked Chemberlin. "That's the pastoral question that's in my heart and I don't know the answer.'' Though she has "no criticism about the decision that they've made,'' she said the question still tugs at her." "How is the family going to get what they need, including the kids? How do they have a sense of Christian community, which for many of us is the formative place?''
Page was equally concerned. "I do encourage our president to find a church for he and his family to attend,'' he said. "And while I deeply appreciate the fact that he does read the daily devotional that Joshua DuBois (director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships) sends to him - I appreciate that very much - those girls need a church. They need to be under instruction and tutelage of some godly people.''The only person who knows President Obama's spiritual needs is President Obama. Perhaps it benefits the image of religion to have the president be faithful on a regular basis, but that has nothing to do with concern for Obama's immortal soul, that has everything to do with religion trying to remain as relevant and powerful as it was in the last administration in this current administration.
Page said it was encouraging that Obama is currently hearing preaching from a Southern Baptist chaplain when he visits Camp David but he doesn't think that's sufficient. "He needs to be faithful on a regular basis, not just when he's on vacation at Camp David so it would help if that were a more consistent and more a part of his life," said Page. "I think it would be a grounding influence for him and an encouragement to the faith community."
Q. What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Lord?Come on guys, we can come up with better questions than that. I plan on mailing a few questions in myself and I encourage you all to do the same. Let me know what your questions are too, I'd like to see what others think is a worthy question for people who are literal worsipers of the bible.
Q. If we are under grace, why must we still keep the law?
Q. What would have happened if Eve had not been tempted?
Q. When God Said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness" who else was He talking about?
Q. Does a person have to observe the Sabbath on Saturday to be a true Christian and thus be given eternal life?
Q. Is fasting a church requirement, or is it for individual needs?
Q. What is the Abyss?
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LOUISVILLE — A mother is angry about a trip led by the head football coach at Breckinridge County High School took about 20 players on a school bus late last month to his church, where nearly half of them — including her son — were baptized.Michelle Ammons said her 16-year-old son was baptized without her knowledge and consent, and she is upset that a public school bus was used to take players to a church service — and that the school district's superintendent was there and did not object.
"Nobody should push their faith on anybody else," said Ammons, whose son, Robert Coffey, said coach Scott Mooney told him and other players that the Aug. 26 outing would include only a motivational speaker and a free steak dinner.
"He said it would bring the team together," Robert, a sophomore, said in an interview.
Two other parents, however, said in interviews that their sons told them that Mooney had said the voluntary outing to Franklin Crossroads Baptist Church in Hardin County would include a revival.
Mooney, contacted by phone, said school district officials instructed him not to comment.
But Superintendent Janet Meeks, who is a member of the church and witnessed the baptisms, said she thinks the trip was proper because attendance was not required, and another coach paid for the gas.
Meeks said parents weren't given permission slips to sign but knew the event would include a church service, if not specifically a baptism. She said eight or nine players came forward and were baptized.
"None of the players were rewarded for going and none were punished for not going," Meeks said.
David Friedman, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said in an interview that the trip would appear to violate Supreme Court edicts on the separation of church and state — even if it was voluntary and the school district didn't pay for the fuel.
"If players want to attend the coach's church and get baptized, that's great," Friedman said. But a coach cannot solicit player attendance at school, he said, noting, "Coaches have great power and persuasion by virtue of their position, and they have to stay neutral."
However, Matt Staver, founder and general counsel for Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based group that provides free legal assistance in religious liberty cases, said there was nothing wrong with trip as long as it was voluntary and no public funds were used. He compared it to a coach inviting players to attend a play or to go see a baseball game.
Neither the ACLU nor Liberty Counsel is involved in the Breckinridge County case.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said in school prayer cases that "at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way that establishes a state religion or religious faith, or tends to do so."
In March, the court rejected an appeal from a high school football coach in New Jersey who wanted to bow his head and kneel during prayers led by his players, despite a school district policy prohibiting it.
Meeks said she would have sought the consent of parents for the baptism of students if they had been "7 or 8 or 9" years old. But she didn't think it was necessary for the players who are "16 or 17."
She said that if Robert's parents didn't know that the outing was going to include a revival service it was because "he apparently was not forthcoming with his parents."
The church's pastor, the Rev. Ron Davis, said that he requires minors to obtain their parents' consent to be baptized, but he added: "Sometimes 16-year-olds look like 18 years. We did the best we could."
He said the event on Aug. 26 "was a great service" and that attendance by the players was strictly voluntary.
"I trust the coach 100%," he said of Mooney. "He is a fine young man and he is sure not going to manipulate anyone."
Two parents, Tim Bruington and Eric Vertress, said in interviews that they knew through their children that the trip would include a revival-type service.
Bruington said his son, Tyler, a senior, decided not to go. Vertress said his son, Matthew, elected to attend and that his mother drove to the church separately for the service.
Ammons, who lives in Big Spring, said that she is a Baptist but her husband, Danny, is Catholic, and that both feel like their son should wait until he is 18 to make important decisions on religion.
"We felt he was brainwashed," she said.
She said she was prepared to drop the matter until she found out that Meeks attended the service. She said she consulted a lawyer in Elizabethtown but hasn't decided what action she will take.
"They have no right to take my son on a school bus across county lines to be a church to be baptized," she said.
While 16 years old is, in my opinion, old enough to start looking into religions and making decisions for themselves, having a football coach ask one of his or her players to go to church while at school and then using state property to get to the church, regardless of who bought the gas for the trip, is a clear violation of the establishment clause. That coach was promoting a specific religion to his players and he was doing so on government property while in a position of influence over minors. This is ridiculous that anyone involved would even feign surprise that parents might be upset. While I am of the opinion that a 16 year old is old enough to make their own religious decisions, I don't consider a coach's influence in attending this kind of event an example of a kid making up their own mind about anything. Also, I might be ok with Tristan going to something like this when he's 16 but that doesn't mean everyone should be ok with their 16 year olds attending which is why asking permission is expected. It's not a matter of 'it was voluntary so the school didn't have to' it's a matter of respect.
What do you think this is a picture of? A beetle? A butterfly? Well, the person who took the picture has evidently exhausted the internet looking up bugs and other explanations and in her non-professional opinion it can't be any of them. In fact, there is only one explanation:'I think it must be a fairy,' she said yesterday as she made the picture public for the first time....Seriously? Ok, Mrs. Bacon, you must have gotten a good look at the creature to take a picture of it, what did you yourself see, regardless of what we can see in this slightly blurry pic?
Mrs Bacon, 55, said she was not even looking through the camera at the time she took the picture. Instead she simply clicked the button while holding it at arm's length out of the back door while chatting with relatives in her kitchen after dinner.
'No one I've shown the photos to has come up with any plausible explanation as to what the figure is.' Mrs Bacon insists her photograph, taken in 2007, involved no sleight of hand. She said she had been reluctant to show it off widely for fear of being branded 'nutty'. 'I used to like fairy stories as a child, but I can't claim to have ever seen one before or since,' she saidSo the plausible explanation you decided on is that it's a fairy? There's a good reason for your hesitation lady...you do in fact seem a bit nutty.
MONKEY GIRL: Evolution Facts and Myths
*There is, of course, no doubt that gravity exists, but the understanding of how and why it effects space and time is surprisingly incomplete when it comes to laboratory evidence. For instance, the existence of gravitational waves is predicted by gravitational theory, but despite determined efforts by physicists for many years, such waves have never been directly detected. Evolution, on the other hand, has been observed directly in the laboratory and in nature innumerable times.
"The appeal to the court's most stridently Catholic member, whose son is a priest, smacks of desperation and favoritism," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.So why does the church want to fight so hard to keep the records from being released? Any reason beyond the obvious embarrassment of having their already well-known (and evidently accepted among the Catholic community) actions being made glaringly public? Well, the Catholic church protects their own.
The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001. They could provide details on how retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan handled the allegations when he was bishop in Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000.It shouldn't be upsetting or even surprising to see religious figures in positions of power helping out their fellow sect-specific theists, regardless of the integrity of the position they hold, but I still find this disappointing. The Catholic church is guilty of willfully protecting pedophile priests for years, they've made no real apologies for this, and they're still only interested in covering their own asses. Disgusting.
Global Mission Church, a predominantly Korean-American congregation in Silver Spring with nearly 2,000 members, has purchased the 120-acre site straddling Frederick and Montgomery counties at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain. The three-story, 138,000-square-foot building would include a sanctuary for 1,160. Senior Pastor Dennis M. Kim - no relation to Manbae - says the Baptist church is simply following its membership, which clustered around Washington when it began 35 years ago, but has since migrated into Gaithersburg, Germantown and Frederick.This is a really good question. I would have not thought about this line of concern to be honest since my initial reaction to any mega-church construction plan is a reflexive 'ew, no.' I think that I would be far less opposed to these behemoth structures if they did focus and dedicate their building plans to being as green as possible. The funds that go into paying for these structures are 100% donated and the church itself doesn't pay taxes. I think a wonderful way to give back to a community which you don't give back to monetarily would be to act as a kind of guinea pig for new 'green' architecture and structural projects. There are plenty of government subsidies to be had by using these 'green'
The staff of the Frederick County Planning Commission has recommended the site plan be approved. But after area residents raised objections at a commission hearing in July, the church attempted to ingratiate itself with the community at the open house last week at the Frederick Holiday Inn. Members laid on a spread of hors d'oeuvres while a string quartet from the Global Mission Church played. Architects, engineers and landscapers staffed information tables to respond to questions about the building project.
Among the 100 or so neighbors who crowded the room, there were many. Meg Menke of nearby Barnesville expressed concern about the church's carbon footprint. If 1,200 people travel three to a car 20 miles each way for services, she said, "we're talking 16,000 miles, whether they come all at once or not.
"In this day and age, we like to think of ourselves as being a little more enlightened about global stewardship and climate change," said Menke, who chairs the Barnesville Planning Commission. "I understand there hasn't been discussion about green architecture, geothermal energy and photoelectric. Where are energy sources coming from?"
Others said the church would jam up area roads and drain the area aquifer. Christine Kefauver said her family had lived around Sugarloaf Mountain for generations, and recounted past efforts to limit the surrounding development.Church officials say the comparison is unfair. They say a balloon test showed that trees would obscure the church's highest point - an 85-foot spire - from passing traffic. Manbae Kim said more urban sites were prohibitively expensive; Dennis Kim said regulations in Montgomery County were too restrictive.
"When we see that church," she said, "it reminds me of driving down to [Interstate] 495 and seeing the Mormon Temple."
"Churches are doing meaningful ministries in the community," the senior pastor said, and named efforts to counsel families, combat drugs and clean up communities. "With no churches in the community, we would lose many good things. That's why we must survive and we must continue to serve. That's our purpose. That's why we are here."Ok, now I have a problem. Scare tactics don't sit well with me and it sounds an awful lot like this pastor is trying to imply that if the community doesn't bend over and allow these giant churches to be built, their kids will become drug addicts and the community will fall apart. The implication as I read it is that communities thrive and are healthy because of church, not because of the people who comprise the community and that is insulting to everyone in Silver Spring.
Under the teacher training and curriculum section it states:Teachers shall prepare and teach lessons throughout the year and throughout the curriculum that:
- Approach religion as academic, not devotional
- Strive for student awareness of religions, not acceptance of religions
- Study about religion, but do not practice religion in the classroom
- Expose students to diversity of religious views, not impose any particular view
- Educate about a variety of religions, not promote or denigrate religion
- Inform students about various beliefs, not conform students to any particular belief
- Demonstrate the impact of economic, social, political and cultural effects of religion throughout history
- Are age appropriate
Further, the proper role for instruction about religion in the public school is in its educational value and not in religious observance or celebration. According to the Supreme Court, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids state action or practices that aid or prefer one religion over another or that aid all religions and thus endorse or show preference for religion over non-religion, while the Free Exercise Clause requires any state actions or practices which interfere with an individual's constitutionally protected religious freedom to be strictly scrutinized.On the surface, I agree with all of this. I think that if religion can be handled in a completely secular academic manner, it's a powerful tool that can teach kids a lot about history and society. However, I think this person's comment expresses what most of our fears are whenever any school district instills specific policies regarding religion:
I don't think our country is ready to incorporate religion into the public school curriculum in a secular manner and because of that, I don't think it should be introduced at all.This is just a time bomb waiting to explode. With the state of discourse and civility in the nation today, this will only create division, suspicion, distrust, anger, etc. among and btwn students, students & teacher/preacher, students & their family, teacher/preacher & student families, etc.
Here's what will happen. This 'class' will be inacted. Over time, the christian religion discussion will occupy 90-95% of the 'class'. At that time, someone will sue the school and the school will drop the class rather than amend the content.
Want your kid to learn religion? Do it your self, send them to a religious school or bible study. When churches, of all religions, start paying taxes then maybe we can discuss using tax money to teach religions. This isn't about education at all, it's about pushing an agenda. Those supporting this would very likely be the first to elect cutting a class they deem 'liberal'.
And speaking of cutting, with budgets the way they are, why is there money for this? I think it should be on a list of ALL options on how to spend the money this would require so it can be considered along with other items (classes, supplies, resources, tools, etc) as to which is most worthy of this expense. But that won't happen.
Also, I take exception to this statement "protecting the liberty rights of students of all faiths and no faith.". Who's to say that not believing in a religion means a person has 'no faith'? I have faith in science, nature, etc.
I spent 17 years of my life feeling ashamed and afraid about eternity. I don't want to waste any more of my life 'appreciating' anything religious.I understand th
is position, but I certainly don't personally share it. I feel that some people have had such a negative experience with religion that religiously inspired art seems to have the same affect on them as a person who was raped looking at Rape of the Sabine Woman by Giovanni Bologna - while I can look at the sculpture and feel sorrowful for the Sabine woman or uncomfortable with the rapist who has her held in his grip but still appreciate the form of the sculpture and the skill with which the piece was made, a person who has experienced the crime might only be able to see the ugly subject matter and may even be forced to re-live their own experiences.
le bit of fruitless reading on my own which left me tired and confused, so some of the more subtle nuances of the book have escaped me. The more I learn about all of the claims the bible makes, the more I wonder how anyone with any amount of self respecting intelligence could possibly literally follow it as if it is their god's unfiltered word.For instance, did you know that the bible mentions unicorns? AIG (the people who brought you that bastion of absurdity, the creation museum) spells it all out for us -
...I just. I don't really know what to say. All I can think of is how Lisa Frank much have had some divine inspiration when she was designing my trapper keeper in 7th grade.Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves (Job 39:9–12.) In Job 38–41, God reminded Job of the characteristics of a variety of impressive animals He had created, showing Job that God was far above man in power and strength.
Job had to be familiar with the animals on God’s list for the illustration to be effective. God points out in Job 39:9–12 that the unicorn, “whose strength is great,” is useless for agricultural work, refusing to serve man or “harrow (plow) the valley.” This visual aid gave Job a glimpse of God’s greatness. An imaginary fantasy animal would have defeated the purpose of God’s illustration.
Modern readers have trouble with the Bible’s unicorns because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34:7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength.
The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.). Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick . . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.”
The elasmotherium, an extinct giant rhinoceros, provides another possibility for the unicorn’s identity. The elasmotherium’s 33-inch-long skull has a huge bony protuberance on the frontal bone consistent with the support structure for a massive horn. In fact, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, in his 1849 book Nineveh and Its Remains, sketched a single-horned creature from an obelisk in company with two-horned bovine animals; he identified the single-horned animal as an Indian rhinoceros. The biblical unicorn could have been the elasmotherium.
Assyrian archaeology provides one other possible solution to the unicorn identity crisis. The biblical unicorn could have been an aurochs (a kind of wild ox known to the Assyrians as rimu). The aurochs’s horns were very symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal II’s palace relief and Esarhaddon’s stone prism. Fighting rimu was a popular sport for Assyrian kings. On a broken obelisk, for instance, Tiglath-Pileser I boasted of slaying them in the Lebanon mountains.
Extinct since about 1627, aurochs, Bos primigenius, were huge bovine creatures. Julius Caesar described them in his Gallic Wars as:
“a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied . . . . Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.”The aurochs’ highly prized horns would have been a symbol of great strength to the ancient Bible reader.
One scholarly urge to identify the biblical unicorn with the Assyrian aurochs springs from a similarity between the Assyrian word rimu and the Hebrew word re’em. We must be very careful when dealing with anglicized transliterated words from languages that do not share the English alphabet and phonetic structure. However, similar words in Ugaritic and Akkadian (other languages of the ancient Middle East) as well as Aramaic mean “wild bull” or “buffalo,” and an Arabic cognate means “white antelope.”
However, the linguistics of the text cannot conclusively prove how many horns the biblical unicorn had. While modern translations typically translate re’em as “wild ox,” the King James Version (1611), Luther’s German Bible (1534), the Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate translated this Hebrew word with words meaning “one-horned animal.”
The importance of the biblical unicorn is not so much its specific identity—much as we would like to know—but its reality. The Bible is clearly describing a real animal. The unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong horns—not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.
Experiencing the shared responsibility for creation (Cf. 51), the Church is not only committed to the promotion of the defense of the earth, of water and of air, given by the Creator to everyone, but above all is committed to protect man from the destruction of himself. In fact, "when 'human ecology' is respected in society, environmental ecology also benefits" (ibid). Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.The funny thing is, anti-environmentalism as far as I've known has largely been a religiously motivated pursuit. Not to mention - the pope is complaining about 'egoistic possession'?
The myth of Vatican wealth. “At the Vatican, everything is for sale, in the popular mind,” Allen said. In reality, the Vatican’s annual operating budget is about $260 million. Allen contrasted that to Harvard University, which has an annual operating budget of $1.3 billion.Which is to say that the Vatican doesn't have a lot of money because the annual operating budget for Harvard is greater than the annual operating budget for the Vatican. OK, that's interesting, but that doesn't seem to address the actual question which is in regard to the wealth of the Vatican. The last sentence in the quote seems to be the most telling - A large percentage of the Vatican's wealth is found in non-liquid assets. And those don't count, according to Catholic apologists. Well of course you guys don't think that should count, if it did there is no way you could argue that the Catholic church is not worth a staggering amount of money!“ (Harvard) could run five Vaticans every year and still have pocket change left over for an endowed chair,” Allen said, equating the Vatican’s patrimony - all the assets it could sell - to that of a medium-sized Catholic university. Its total patrimony is $770 million. The University of Notre Dame’s endowment is four and a half times greater, he said.
Allen noted that while people often assume a significant monetary value attached to the artwork the Vatican holds, it is not for sale.
For the eighth consecutive year, the operating statement for fiscal year 2000 for the Holy See closes with a net gain of 17.720 billion, equal to $8,516,000 US at the exchange rate at the end of the year of 2,080.89 lire per dollar. The total expenses were 404.378 billion and the total income was 422.098 billion. Compared with the previous fiscal year, the income was more substantial, having increased by 64 billion. As is easily imaginable, the increase in expenses is strictly related to the celebration of the Jubilee Year, which brought with it greater activity, and therefore a greater need for personnel, within the various offices of the Roman Curia and also of the media organs connected with the Holy See.As the article states, this is less of a gain than what is normally seen because in 2000 the church had a lot more expenditures with their celebrations of the new millennium. That's the church itself - greedy, for-profit, catholic church. The pope as an individual is no better. Th
e pope is allowed the best medical coverage, the poshest of transportation choices, a spectacular living quarters (see right) and everything he may want free of charge. The pope's only argument in defense of his irresponsible comments regarding greed and atheists is that he himself has no concept of greed since he gets everything he wants without having to even consider a paycheck - all the pope has to do is ask and it is there.
d the like.
Mr. Garrido gave a telephone interview from jail to station KCRA in Sacramento, saying, "In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story."Yeah, I'm sure it's totally a heartwarming story involving you impregnating a 14 year old child you abducted and forcing her and the children to live in tents in your backyard without outside contact or medical attention for almost two decades. He had two kids with the girl, an 11 year old and a 15 year old. Previous to the abduction he had been convicted on charges of rape and kidnapping of a minor and was an apparently legally compliant registered sex offender.
"My life has been straightened out” in recent years, he said. “Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. You’re going to be absolutely impressed. It’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around."
Grey Matters: Just Say NoneIn case you're interested, the Hitchens Seattle Town Hall can be found here.
By Knute Berger
What is the None Zone? It’s a term coined by religious researchers who reported in 2004 that the Pacific Northwest—Washington, Oregon and Alaska—is the only part of the United States where a majority of people (more than 60 percent) check “none of the above” when asked their religious affiliation. That compares with 40 percent nationally. And nearly one-third say they are purely secular “humanists” or have no religion at all. That compares with 19 percent nationally and a mere 11 percent in the South.In short, the None Zone is the opposite of the Bible Belt.
Seattle has gained a reputation as a particularly godless corner of the None Zone. For a time last summer, the most-watched video on the Seattle Channel Web site was a Town Hall lecture by Christopher Hitchens about his provocatively titled book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
During the City Council races last fall, candidate Tim Burgess was put on the defensive for being a Christian “values” voter. In Seattle, that made him suspect despite his liberal, green and pro-gay politics. And in November, Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist D. Parvaz was excoriated by right-wing Web sites and the Fox TV crowd for seeming to condone “church burning” in a piece about a self-proclaimed performance artist who was alleged to have contemplated torching a church for the sake of “art.” One Northwest Republican blogger concluded that Parvaz “obviously hates Christians.” Though a complete misreading of what Parvaz said, it fit the image that liberal Seattle’s idea of religious tolerance is to tolerate people who would burn churches.
Seattle and the Northwest are not completely irreligious. There are plenty of Catholics and Protestants, and there’s a yeasty fermentation in the number of evangelical entrepreneurs, New Age groups, neo-pagans and other nonmainstream religious groups that call the area home. The West has always been ripe for religious and utopian experiments. And many Nones still profess a belief in God. They may not sit in a pew on Sunday, but most aren’t atheists. They may simply be skeptics of organized religion.
Perhaps the largest contingent of Nones are nature worshippers. In an article on specific Northwest religious trends, called “Secular But Spiritual,” Mark Shibley of Southern Oregon University wrote that “nothing is more central to Northwest nature religion than the idea of wilderness.” Preserving wilderness, therefore, is a sacred act. As a result, he says, “Much contemporary environmentalism in the Northwest is a religious system.” You get a sense of that zeal in the growing movement led by Al Gore, Greg Nickels and others to save the world from the apocalypse of global warming.
The source of Seattle values would be a private matter if it wasn’t for the city’s widespread cultural and technological influence; it matters to people everywhere if Microsoft supports gay rights or whether Starbucks shows a mermaid’s bare breasts on its logo (it once did, but no longer).
Few expect perfect moral behavior from corporate players—heaven help you if you raised your child to be like Boeing, a company that has a history of bullying and cheating to get what it wants. But knowing the source of a company’s values can offer insights into its behavior. Newspaper and magazine columnist (and founder of Microsoft’s Slate magazine) Michael Kinsley says that Ayn Rand is popular at Microsoft. She was an atheist who originated the philosophy of Objectivism and touted the virtues of selfishness and dog-eat-dog competition. No wonder she’s the darling of Redmond’s chosen.
Another reason values matter: Seattle is a biotech research center, and we stand at the threshold of fundamentally changing the world with cloning, gene manipulation, nanotechnology, the wiring of human brains, the impact of new drugs and genetic treatments. We also are home to global organizations that will spread these techniques and technologies to the world. What do these people who carry our future in their hands ask themselves when they go into work each day? “What would Jesus do?” “What would the Dalai Lama do?” “What would Ayn Rand do?” “What would Gaia do?” “What would Darwin do?”
Here in the None Zone, there is no single answer, but the answers are still important.
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