Religious News/Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

Harold Camping has cracked the mathematical code in the Bible to reveal the real date of the end of the world, May 21, 2011.

Here is his math:

By Camping’s understanding, the Bible was dictated by God and every word and number carries a spiritual significance. He noticed that particular numbers appeared in the Bible at the same time particular themes are discussed.

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

“Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved.

“I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that,” Camping said.

LINK

[Doug]

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

DOUG
Why that number, as opposed to, say the number of weeks in a year, or the number of months, or the number of seconds? Why multiply 1,978 by a number related to the calendar? Why not the number of planets, or the number of suns in our solar system?

This is typical numerology: baseless, useless, and silly.

[Dardedar]

Who could have predicted this?

'Rapture': Believers perplexed after prediction fail

'Some scepticism'
Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired transportation agency worker in New York, said he had spent more than $140,000 of his savings on advertisements in the run-up to 21 May to publicise the prediction.

After 1800 passed and nothing had happened, he said: "I do not understand why... I do not understand why nothing has happened."

"I can't tell you what I feel right now. Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here."

Other followers said they had had their doubts about the prediction.

"I had some scepticism but I was trying to push the scepticism away because I believe in God," said Keith Bauer, who travelled 4,830km (3,000 miles), from Maryland to California, where Mr Camping's Family Radio is based, for the Rapture.

"I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this Earth," said Mr Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver, who took the week off work for the voyage.

Other followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith."

BBC

[Dardedar]

Update on that end of the world thing:

***
Camping, who made a special appearance before the press at the Oakland headquarters of the media empire Monday evening, apologized for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have." Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, the light dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.
The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21."
***

http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.s ... _says.html

[Betsy]

"All we need is a preacher to say global warming will bring an end to the world, then people might listen." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Doug]

"All we need is a preacher to say global warming will bring an end to the world, then people might listen." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

DOUG
Yes, but the nutters would create more global warming to hasten the end of the world! Remember, the end of the world is what they crave.

[Dardedar]

How Jay Sekulow lost the culture wars

Thanks to the Religious Right, atheist clubs thrive in schools.

Published on May 25, 2011 by Dave Niose in Our Humanity, Naturally

If atheists take over America in a generation or two, you can thank (or blame, depending on how you view it) Jay Sekulow.

Anyone immersed in the culture wars knows Sekulow, who currently runs the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Religious Right's answer to the ACLU. Founded by fundamentalist televangelist Pat Robertson, the ACLJ asserts and defends the conservative religious agenda in the courts.

How then, you may ask, could Sekulow, as a Religious Right litigator, be responsible for spreading atheism? To answer this, we need some history."

Psychology Today

[Doug]

No money for it, but it could be fun. Hurry, though, only a few days left:
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Could you perform an interpretive dance of Christian discovering the universe is random, chaotic and godless?

I'm serious. If you do it, post a Youtube video of it and provide a link, I will not only give you best answer, I will promote your video; you could be the next Youtube celebrity. Cool, huh? I'll leave the question open for as long as I can...

See here.

============= ========================

[Dardedar]

Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain

A study links life-changing religious experiences, like being born again, with atrophy in the hippocampus

The article, “Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life,” by Amy Owen and colleagues at Duke University represents an important advance in our growing understanding of the relationship between the brain and religion. The study, published March 30 in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation. It is a surprising result, given that many prior studies have shown religion to have potentially beneficial effects on brain function, anxiety, and depression."

Scientific American

[Dardedar]

What do I as a freethinker stand for? What do I think is right? The following:

***
The Affirmations of Humanism:
A Statement of Principles

We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.

We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.

We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.

We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.

We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

LINK

[Dardedar]

Marriage in the Bible:



Saw it on Skeptic Money

[Betsy]

Who has the bigger closet, Gays or Athiests?
...
It sounds almost comic, I know, but if you've spent as much time as I have meeting religious people in small-town America, it's easy to imagine what "outing" yourself as an atheist could mean in such a place. 70% of Americans believe in hell. They think you'll go there if you're an atheist, and some are not shy about giving you a taste of it now in order to "save" you from it later. Listening to the painful stories of atheists who did come out reminded me of all the stories I've heard from gay friends in similar circumstances.

Athiests in the Closet

[kwlyon]

I would like to be in the closet however I refuse to remain in such close proximity to Tom Cruise and R Kelly....

[Doug]

Who has the bigger closet, Gays or Athiests?

You could be openly gay in Congress long before you could be openly atheist. (There's one, Pete Stark (D) California.)

So I'd say atheists have the bigger closet. (But the gay closets are a lot better organized.)

[L.Wood]

.

"The Miss USA Pageant and America’s “Dummy Map”

Miss USA Pageant and beliefs/opinions about evolution vs creationism (Note one goes to pageants for the T/A and well, pageantry, not the conversation).

What berryblog does is record all the contestants' responses to "whether evolution should be taught in schools?" and then map the contestants to a U.S. political map.

sample:

Arkansas: I was never taught evolution; it wasn’t a “big focal point in our studies.” But to each his own; go ahead and teach it if you feel you need to.

Massachusetts: Yes, I was even taught evolution in a religious school. The more knowledge the better.

.

[L.Wood]

Moderator note: This story is from June 15, 2010.

.

LIGHTNING STRIKES "TOUCHDOWN JESUS"

The ‘Touchdown Jesus’ statue in Ohio was engulfed in flames after a lightning strike late last night. The six-story-tall depiction of Jesus Christ with his arms raised stood in front of Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati. It burned to the ground during a thunderstorm. The “King of Kings” statue which had stood since 2004 was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame. The frame is all that remains.




For the actual burning of Jesus and the aftermath go here

BeliefNet has this to offer:

...What’s amazing about this is not that it happened – lightning hits and burns things every day in summer thunderstorm season. What baffles me is our constant human urge to “make something” of these events, to reach and grope and assign some “higher” meaning to acts of nature. That was my first reaction, honestly. I saw this story this morning and I thought, “What does it mean?” I want to say, “accidental” of course. But something in me grapples for more. A few million people must be saying the same because this story is the hottest link on Google this morning. Amazing, isn’t it. After all the efforts to debunk Jesus and faith and the Bible and the entire Christian faith, we’re still drawn to stories that touch the topic, even ones that might signal its demise. If there’s a meaning behind “Touchdown Jesus” burning down I guess it’s this: The fact that the story matters is a sign itself!

“Jesus, you matter. One day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that you are truly Lord of Lords! The fact that we notice a lightning strike on an image depicting this truth – and in some corners chuckle about the irony of it – shows that deep down we know, we know it is true! You are King of Kings!”



.


Edited by Savonarola, 20110710 1457: Added date note.

[DeeJay]

Well, big surprise that lightning hit Jesus, since the upraised plastic hands built around metal frames are virtual lightning rods!

Speaking of lightning, the tree near the shrine of little Caylee Marie Anthony was struck by lightning on the very day of the not-guilty verdict of Casey Anthony. There were lots of good quotes about that, but here's a sample: "It could be a sign from the angels that they aren't happy with what's happened," or "God has spoken. Casey's guilty,"
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loc ... 9678.story

Never mind that Florida is the lightning capital of the U.S.: http://www.observernews.net/artman/publ ... 1601.shtml
According to the article, lightning kills more people in Florida than all other weather related phenomena combined - including hurricanes.

I saved the best quote for last, on the day Casey Anthony received a verdict of "not guilty"): "The devil is dancing tonight. I believe that since June 16, 2008, there is a little angel in heaven named Caylee. God bless her. I hope she knows nothing of our goings on here... and I hope that little Caylee, somewhere, is happy tonight." ~Nancy Grace, July 5, 2011.

[DeeJay]

Apparently, one can be struck down while doing the Lord's work.

Unfortunately, I don't have links for all these stories, but I have collected them over the years.

Minister Electrocuted
in Baptismal
by Chuck Shepherd
sources: Wilmington Morning Star, New York Times Regional Newspapers


February 23, 1994

A 45-year-old minister was electrocuted at the Christian Fellowship Church in Larose, Louisiana, as he was standing in a pool about to baptize a dozen people. According to the coroner's office, the cause was either the microphone he was holding or a faulty pool heater.

http://www.christianchronicle.org/artic ... ery_safety

*****************************************

Pastor electrocuted in church
31/10/2005 08:05 - (SA)

Waco - A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church on Sunday morning after grabbing a microphone while partially submerged, a church employee said.

The Rev Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in water up to his shoulder in a baptismal at University Baptist Church when he was electrocuted, said Jamie Dudley, a church business administrator and wife of another pastor there.

Doctors in the congregation performed chest compressions, she said. Lake was taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Centre, where nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said he was pronounced dead.

The woman Lake was baptising apparently had not stepped into the water, Ben Dudley said.

Pastors at University Baptist Church routinely use a microphone during baptisms, Dudley said.

"He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear," Dudley said. "It's the only way you can be loud enough."

About 800 people attended the morning service, which was larger than normal because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University, Dudley said.

"At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying to figure out what was going on," Ben Dudley said in a story in Monday's Waco Tribune-Herald. "Everyone just immediately started praying."

Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine years, the last seven as pastor, Dudley said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/ ... 5829.shtml

**********************************************

In 1981 Rev James Gaxele, 43, a Baptist minister, was about to baptise four new members of the church in the Silver Park River, Transvaal. He stepped into the water praying, and as he uttered the words 'Holy Spirit' he sank into the mud and drowned. In March the previous year, baptism also proved fatal in Stockholm. A 62-year-old Pentacostal preacher was about to baptise a boy in front of a congregation of 200. Pentacostal baptism is by total immersion and Swedish fonts are electrically heated. The preacher, standing in the water up to his waist, was handed a microphone and electrocuted.

No source located.

[Dardedar]

Kudzu Jesus v. Roundup



In eastern North Carolina, about a mile south of Kinston, is a utility pole that gave rise to what has to be the quote of the week. Said Kent Hardison, who runs the nearby Ma's Hot Dog House:
"I glanced at it, and it looks like Jesus. I thought, 'You can't spray Jesus with Roundup.'"
Kudzu, the infamous weed that has taken over much of the rural south, has climbed up the pole and spread out along the electric lines that it bears. To area observers, the Kinston Free Press reports, it bears a striking resemblance to Jesus' crucifixion.
We can't speak for the people at Monsanto here in St. Louis, but we're pretty sure they wouldn't want their Roundup herbicide sprayed on Kudzu Jesus.
Besides, the folks around Kinston kind of like the symbolism. "It doesn't matter what you do, it (kudzu) is going to be around," Michelle Davis said. "Ain't that a lot like Jesus?"

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/co ... z1Ru0aIdQL

Here's another one:



LINK

[DeeJay]

My father, in his work as a soil conservationist, gave landowners advice about certain problems they had on their land, such as how to control kudzu. His solution? Goats! Goats will eat kudzu. Problem solved! I thought you would appreciate that, Darrel. How ironic would that be, to let goats eat the kudzu Jesus?