Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Great:

"...under Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed sweeping new school voucher program, tens of millions of Louisiana taxpayer dollars will be used to offer vouchers to more than half of the state’s poor and middle-class public school students. These students can in turn use these vouchers to attend more than 120 private schools, including a number of small, Bible-based learning institutions that boast extreme anti-science and anti-history curriculums while championing creationism."

Huff Po

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I am trying to get a nitwit blowhard fundie to post an example of supposed Bible prophecy that (they claim) confirms the existence of God. Here is something they said in response:

"I seen and experienced advanced, even now, computer-aided, Biblical Scholarship rescue and/or correct many of the beliefs of the past, and also discard the ones which did not pass the presently available greater exegetical scrutiny testing." --NJK

It's on Phil's forum here.

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Indonesian City Wants to Ban Women From Straddling Motorbikes

"JAKARTA, Indonesia — A plan by officials in an Indonesian city to ban women from straddling motorbikes has prompted an outcry from critics, who say local leaders are infringing on women’s safety and freedom in the name of religion...

The mayor of Lhokseumawe, Suaidi Yahya, proposed the straddling ban in a New Year’s speech, saying that it was “improper” for women to sit with spread legs and that women should only sit sidesaddle, a practice that opponents say is both less comfortable and less safe.

“We want to save women from things that will cause them to violate Shariah law,” Mr. Suaidi told The Jakarta Globe following his speech. “We wish to honor women with this ban, because they are delicate creatures.”

NYT's

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Religious opposition to the table fork

"...the medieval invention of the small fork for use at the table would seem like a good idea. (Industrial-size ones for cooking had been used by the Romans and others for centuries.) But you know what religious people are like when someone wants to introduce any sort of change – “It’s not sanctioned by Scripture! It’s the work of the Devil!”

Here’s an excerpt from an interesting article, “The Uncommon Origins of the Common Fork“:

Forks for dining only started to appear in the noble courts of the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire in about the 7th century and became common among wealthy families of the regions by the 10th century. Elsewhere, including Europe, where the favored implements were the knife and the hand, the fork was conspicuously absent.

Imagine the astonishment then when in 1004 Maria Argyropoulina, Greek niece of Byzantine Emperor Basil II, showed up in Venice for her marriage to Giovanni, son of the Pietro Orseolo II, the Doge of Venice, with a case of golden forks—and then proceeded to use them at the wedding feast. They weren’t exactly a hit. She was roundly condemned by the local clergy for her decadence, with one going so far as to say, “God in His wisdom has provided man with natural forks—his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating.”

When Argyropoulina died of the plague two years later, Saint Peter Damian, with ill-concealed satisfaction, suggested that it was God’s punishment for her lavish ways. “Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. . . . this woman’s vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take his revenge. For He raised over her the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither.”

And still today Christian fundamentalists think that gay marriage is causing hurricanes in the US, and Muslim fundamentalists think that women’s clothing is causing earthquakes in Iran, and it’s all caused by the Devil.
And do you ever see the Devil with a hurricane or an earthquake? No! (But you see him with a fork…)"

LINK

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Growth Of The Nones – On NPR



NPR

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"Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) has revealed his own plan for combating America's violence problem -- and it differs from President Barack Obama's on a key point. Specifically, the former presidential candidate said that instead of enacting tougher gun control legislation, Americans should simply pray for protections...
In his own statement, Perry acknowledged the problem of violence in the U.S. but said enacting tougher gun laws was not the right way to solve it, the Houston Chronicle reports.
Perry said that there was "evil prowling" in the world that has appeared in television and movies, and then found its way into vulnerable minds.

"As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children."

LINK

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