Bloggers UNITE!

Today, I gave Tim Cooley Le Café Witteveen bump. He should expect at least three new hits today. Maybe four.

You’re welcome, Tim.

Honk.

Soaring Dodo Steve P recently turned me on another blog from a woman named Leah who has a blog called “The Whore of all the Earth“.  Oddly enough, she named her blog after this quote that I posted the other day from Martin Luther.

Leah’s a recovering Mormon. And, man, she’s cool. I dropped her a line this morning when I stumbled on this video from Everything is Terrible. I thought she would get a kick out of it, which she did.

But then I noticed on her blog that she posted something about Glenn Beck. I never knew Beck was a Mormon, and if I had known, it would have made criticizing him that much better. There’s this one guy I know who — ever since I can remember — he has degraded, slammed, tarnished, thrown shit and bricks at Mormons. Around his house, there are books lying around on how erroneous Mormonism is.

And yet, all is forgiven and forgotten as soon as the FOX News channel features him on its station. It’s loony.

Do you know how highly Glenn Beck regards marriage? If this link is correct, Beck considers it so great that the ONLY reason he got married and the ONLY reason he became a Mormon was to have sex.

Here’s the transcript of the interview with Glenn Beck and wife:

Stossel to Beck: “You became a Mormon. Why?”

Beck: “I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is, like, hot, and she wouldn’t have sex with me until we got married, and she wouldn’t marry me unless we had a religion.”

Stossel to Tania Beck: “He just told us he became religious only to have sex with you. Was he joking?”

Tania:“No, he was not joking.”

Beck has raised the bar of douchebaggery to completely untouchable.

Tim Cooley: This blog is rated R for Reason.

The other day, a comment came in from someone named “Tim Cooley.” It was an intelligent response … succinct, supportive of the topic.

Naturally, I thought highly of this “Tim Cooley.”

If a reader has a blog, I tend to rush over to check their site as soon as I get a chance. It turns out, Cooley is a 15-year old atheist who blogs about science.

He incorporates blogs about religion as religion tends to be an enemy of science.

I admire Cooley for a couple reasons. One, he was able to leave religion early. Two, he loves science. Three, he stands strong against many who have come forward to antagonize him. And four, I’m jealous.

He’s living out a pursuit of academia that I can only dream about. I mean, I started late for the most part. He started early.

I’ve bookmarked his blog, and you should too. I have high hopes for him and his efforts. Keep up the good work, Cooley.

Insurance Companies: Profit over Life.

Spread. The. Word.

From URB.com:

Remember in the later part of last year when SABER dropped the video of the flag being painted for Obama’s healthcare initiative. You might remember it pissed off FOX News.  Well he is back to discuss all the foolish notions of the 24hr “Fair and Balanced” news network, a network that by their own charter actually only shows “news” for 8 hours a day. (I wonder if he fell into the news or the opinutainment category, probably both?!)

SABER talks about his new set of prints from the flag project, the dirty FOX and his healthcare battles.  Many of you may not know that he has a pre-existing condition known as Epilepsy and cannot get healthcare.  In short SABER, if anyone, has something worthwhile to say on the subject.  I’m in your boat too SABER, thanks for using your platform to discuss such a serious and debilitating subject in our nation’s landscape.

Mormon Marriage Madness

Don’t forget: “If you’re 25 years old and unmarried, you’re a menace to society.”

(VIA Everything is Terrible)

Dinner Blogging

I have let dinner blogging go by the wayside. Holy damn.

Neither of these dinners were original. You may have seen versions of them before. But they were better than the last time, so you have to look at the new pictures again.

Bon appétit!

Roasted cod topped with lemon zest and chives with red quinoa and sautéed spinach and mushrooms

Scallop and corn chowdah. Yes, chow-dah.

Tina’s Beautiful Symmetry

Tina’s been posting a little about our fertility efforts and some reflections on inspiration.

You should go read her blog.

Bon appétit.

Religion and women

I just read this article that I saw posted over at The Friendly Atheist on “Religion and Women”. It got me thinking.

Religion and women have been a topic of interest of mine for a long time. In college and before, I wrote several papers about women in scripture. If I were a woman, I would have left Christianity a LONG time before I did. I remember thinking being a Christian woman would kind of suck. Although, that research probably put me further on the path away from Christianity.

The biblical view of women is disturbing and often times vile.

As I grew to understand the Greek and the English interpretation of biblical language, a Christians’ obligation is to have a sort of metaphysical love affair with Jesus — not sexual of course.

Why did the early church leaders choose celibacy? Why do women choose nunnery? It is a very simple interpretation of biblical manuscripts. Devotion to Jesus through the Catholic avenues is certainly a valid method of “worship”. This notion of life-long devotion to Jesus is why I looked deeply into seminary during college. At the time, I was exploring Christianity as an academic avenue, and seminary was logical next step to academic stewardship.

Of course I abandoned those ideas, partly thanks to my bible classes which would have preceded post-collegiate biblical training.

Baseball-gate, Ha! We have you now baseballers! We’ll never go to a game again!

In the news, Mark McGwire admitted to steroid use through the 1990s and especially during the 99 season when he and some other baseball player were battling it out to earn the homerun crown.

To a guy like me, I could care less. Baseball and almost all American sports mean very little to me. Since I was young, I’ve compared American sports to a predominantly man’s religion (sexist I know). I’ve met women who are die-hard fans since I’ve moved to Chicago. But very rarely have I met women before who crack a cold one to watch a Sunday afternoon game.

The whole “comparison to a religion” thing, I get why that makes sense. I get why the religious say, “Atheism is a religion.” The religious say just about anything is a religion if it distracts a person from god worship.

The faithful are taught that anything that distracts from faith in god qualifies as idolatry. This is how the faithful interpret the ten commandments (Deut 5:7).

In their modern context, money, sex, sports, material goods like cars or houses, alcohol, drugs, stamp collecting … all these things qualify as “idols”, because they steal precious worship time from the heavenly father. They only say this on paper and in public. But if you called them out for idol worship, say, every week night when they turn on their glowing shrine to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, they don’t qualify. Partly because they think they are pastors sent from god.