Brain, With A Side Order Of Communion Wafers.

[elfs]

Tough Enough

James Fallows and Matt Yglesias on how the press wants to appear "tough" and "objective", but because objectivity would demand picking sides in ideologically-driven fights over real issues like health care, economic policies, and military priorities, the press chooses to be "tough" only on the freak shows issues where "objectivity" can be maintained.

McCain ws. McCain

Fareed Zakhira on how McCain seeks to magically unite both those who would use economic power for ideological gain, and those who would use it for financial security, and how that's impossible. McCain apparently called to exclude Russia and China from the G8. Does the man not understand what the G8 is for?

Prayer Leads to Second Degree Reckless Manslaughter

PZ Myers brings us a horrific tale of a couple who let a child die because they believed in the power of prayer over medicine. The couple have lost custody of their other three children, but Wisconsin has a law on the books (Wis 948.04) that states that "a person is not guilty of an offense solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing." PZ rightly calls this "a religious exemption to murder your own children."

Jesus Made Me Puke

I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this – once you've gone this far – you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

have some hopeful sciency ideas to counteract the awful?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13798-comment-we-need-a-nobel-prize-for-kids.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt10_head_Kids'%20Nobel%20prize

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That is indeed very cool.

[kengr]

Heck, it took something like six deaths in one year from the same congregation doing that "cure thru prayer" bit back in the 1990s to get Oregon to remove the same sort of religious exemption.

That came out in the news coverage when the same church lost another kid a month or two back.