Religious News/Quotes of the Day

[Doug]

See here.

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them.

..."It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws," said Michael "Mikey" Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

...Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they've told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as "spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ."

[Darrel]

Holy.

Shit.

[Darrel]

Dawkins Interviews Wendy Wright Pts. 1 and 2.

[kwlyon]

That was an AMAZING interview....can we say intentionally obtuse?

[Doug]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Biblical citations inscribed on U.S.-manufactured weapon sights used by New Zealand's troops in Afghanistan will be removed because they are inappropriate and could stoke religious tensions, New Zealand said Thursday.

The inscriptions on products from defense contractor Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan, came to light this week in the U.S. where Army officials said Tuesday they would investigate whether the gun sights – also used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq – violate U.S. procurement laws.

Australia also said Thursday its military used the sights and was now assessing what to do.

Trijicon said it has had such inscriptions on its products for three decades and has never received complaints about them before.
See here.

[Doug]

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy came to the defense of a Michigan company, Trijicon...:

"My wife made a good observation yesterday when we were talking about this story, and that is, 'hey, wait a minute, the Taliban and the extremists, what is it they say just before they blow themselves up or kill somebody, they say Allahu Akbar.' If anybody's making this a religious thing, they started it."

Trijicon has announced that it will cease the practice and is offering its clients kits to remove existing inscriptions.

See here.

[Darrel]

Fox & Friends... "...what is it they say just before they blow themselves up or kill somebody, they say Allahu Akbar.' If anybody's making this a religious thing, they started it."

DAR
Again I say, Holy Shit. Talk about the perfect example of the three year old, tit for tat mentality of the children we are dealing with here. Holy. Shit.

Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer:

"This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," said Weinstein. "It's literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we're fighting. We're emboldening an enemy." Link

[kwlyon]

This is not really a big enough deal to even be news worthy. I do agree that it is ABSURDLY inappropriate and should be dealt with before future orders are made from this company. However this is a non-issue. We are talking about a billion dollar company. Those in charge of purchasing simply need to request that all new orders lack these inscriptions and the company will comply without any fuss...again we are talking about a Billion dollar contract. They will not pitch a fit...they love the dollar far more than the jesus. As for the sights that are already in the field, well, they will become a commodity. I would not mind buying a "jesus riffle" on ebay!

Kevin

[Doug]

This is not really a big enough deal to even be news worthy.

DOUG
Well, it is a news event that they WERE doing it, even if they are going to stop.

[kwlyon]

This is not really a big enough deal to even be news worthy.

DOUG
Well, it is a news event that they WERE doing it, even if they are going to stop.

Indeed you are right.

Kevin

[RobertMadewell]

Here's something to make you guys smile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUB0kLLBUA

[Darrel]

"Integral to the myth of atheism as a religion is the false proposition that atheists claim to "know" there is no God. Robert Green Ingersoll, the 19th-century orator dubbed the "Great Agnostic," put it succinctly in 1885 when asked a question by a Philadelphia reporter who was trying to get him to denounce atheists. "Don't you think the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer than that of the Atheist?" the reporter asked. Ingersoll replied, "There is no difference. The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: "I do not know, but I do not believe that there is any god. The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a god: but we know that he does not know. He simply believes. He cannot know. The Atheist cannot know that God does not exist."

Today, as in the past, atheists can say only that on the basis of the available evidence, we don't think an omnipotent deity has anything to do with either the ultimate origins of the universe or the ethical dilemmas that human beings confront every day. Indeed, we do not "know" how the first particle of matter came into being any more than believers "know" how God came into being. We admit this. They don't."

--Susan Jacoby, The Spirited Atheist

[Darrel]

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
-- Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

[Darrel]

San Francisco’s Answer to Westboro Baptist Church

[Doug]

The Making of An Atheist: Interview with Jim Spiegel
2/10/10

Taylor University Philosopher, Jim Spiegel, just released his book, The Making of An Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Moody Publishers, 2010). Below is our interview with Spiegel about his book and the implications of his thesis for the debate between atheism and theism.

Like any philosopher of religion, I’ve followed the new atheist movement with interest. But after reading numerous responses from Christian apologists, I noticed a conspicuous lack of attention to the moral-psychological roots of atheism. Given that the biblical writers emphasize this dimension of unbelief, I thought someone needed to address it.

How does this book uniquely contribute to critiques of atheism and the “new atheism”?

Most Christian apologists’ responses to the new atheists challenge their arguments and reveal the many fallacies in their objections to religious faith. This is helpful, of course, and I applaud the work of Ravi Zacharias, Alister McGrath, Dinesh D’Souza, Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, Tim Keller, and others for their superb contributions to the debate. What they so well demonstrate is that atheism is not the consequence of any lack of evidence for God. So the question naturally arises, What is the cause of atheism? That is the question I address in my book.

The “noetic effects of sin” (as it’s sometimes called) plays an important conceptual and explanatory role in your book. In general, can you briefly explain your view on this matter?

I take my cue from Scripture, specifically such passages as Romans 1:18-32, where the Apostle Paul asserts that no one has any excuse not to believe in God. Rather, he says, some “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). In my book I develop a model for how this happens, tracing the suppression of truth to a willful rejection of God, prompted by immorality and self-deception. Thus, I argue, sinful behaviors cloud and distort cognition.

See here, if you can stomach it.

[Darrel]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

We're atheists, cause we're wicked.

A tale as old as time.

[Doug]

"I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead." --Elton John, Parade Magazine, week of Feb. 21st.

[Darrel]

Rapture Ready Pets

Business Week Feb. 22, 2010

Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that "I'm trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income."

Whatever motivates Centre, he has tapped into a source of genuine unease. Todd Strandberg, who founded a biblical prophecy Web site called raptureready.com that draws 250,000 unique visitors a month, agrees that Fido and Mittens are doomed. "Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you," he says. "A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

[Darrel]

What's more important: five, six, 10 or 20 more years on earth? Or living forever?


--DAVID VALDEZ, a Jehovah's Witness minister at the Kingdom Hall in Virginia, where lung-transplant patient Maribel Perez, 36, once worshipped; she was excommunicated for agreeing to a possible blood transfusion during surgery — which Witnesses don't allow.



Link

[Darrel]

The Shroud of Turin, now in 3D

"Church authorities in Turin condemned plans by an order of monks to sell 3D glasses to pilgrims viewing the Holy Shroud when it goes on display for six weeks after Easter, The London Times reported Wednesday.

According to Bruno Fabbiani, an expert at Turin Polytechnic in holograph technology and printed images, the 3D glasses will enable pilgrims to see details invisible to the naked eye, such as the wounds on the figure of the man on the linen cloth.

The Turin Shroud is held by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ but regarded by skeptics as a medieval forgery.

The commission in charge of the shroud, comprising church and Turin officials, said in a statement that “the sale of special glasses for the three dimensional viewing of details on the shroud” was “an exclusively commercial initiative” that it did not support or promote in anyway."

LINK