Religious News/Quotes of the Day

[Doug]

PHOENIX (AP) -- A nun and administrator at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix has been reassigned and rebuked by the local bishop for agreeing that a severely ill woman needed an abortion to survive.

Sister Margaret McBride was on an ethics committee that included doctors that consulted with a young woman who was 11 weeks pregnant late last year, The Arizona Republic newspaper reported on its website Saturday. The woman was suffering from a life-threatening condition that likely would have caused her death if she hadn't had the abortion at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

Hospital officials defended McBride's actions but confirmed that she has been reassigned from her job as vice president of mission integration at the hospital. They said in a statement that saving the mother required that the fetus be aborted.

...Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was "automatically excommunicated" because of the action. The Catholic Church allows the termination of a pregnancy only as a secondary effect of other treatments, such as radiation of a cancerous uterus.

"I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese," Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition.

See here.

[Dardedar]

Theocratic Ed has a doosy of a quote today:

"Truth has an authority that is totally independent of humanity, which shows the existence of that final authority that humans must obey."

Another humdinger from Ed:

"God ordains that which comes to pass, Sybil. See, it is "true" that the kleenex is going to pop up, if it does. God is active truth."

[Dardedar]

Bible science:

"The Bible says you can manipulate the appearance of goats by managing the appearance of the mating environment.

Jacob did it in chapter thirty of Genesis. He worked out a deal with his father-in-law Laban to manage Laban’s flocks in exchange for the striped and spotted goats.

It seems that goats, like people, tend to mate when they go out and drink, so Jacob stripped the bark off some trees near the stream, and the goats would see the striped logs while they were doing it. They therefore produced striped and spotted offspring, and made Jacob wealthy.

It was known at the time that what the parents see during sex determines what the offspring will look like.

This knowledge has since been lost to mainstream science."

[Savonarola]

This knowledge has since been lost to mainstream science."

Lemme tweak this statement:

This knowledge has since been lost to mainstream science reality.

(Reality kicks the Bible's ass -- the anatomy, not the animal -- every time.)

[Dardedar]

Lady Ga Ga is very religious. Who knew?

LINK

[Doug]

Lady Ga Ga is very religious. Who knew?

LINK

DOUG
I think it's just PR. She's trying to be like Madonna or something.

[kwlyon]

Lady Ga Ga is very religious. Who knew?

LINK

I'd make her scream "Oh God".....yea....had to go there...even though I have never really though her attractive.

[Betsy]

My son Matt just started a new facebook page called "A World Absent of Religion" (WAR):

check it out!

[Dardedar]

Another deeply profound religious sentiment from Theocrat Ed:

"If you have no fear of failing to act according to truth, then you are simply a fool, and can have no ultimate participation in truth and justice, except as the recipient of its wrath."

[Dardedar]

Rap video. It's the new Jesus approved way to hug:

Christian Side Hugs

[kwlyon]

Rap video. It's the new Jesus approved way to hug:

Christian Side Hugs

Just catchin this? Here...This is gold!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70WJemBV ... re=related

And a response from our favorite sex bomb goddess:

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

[Dardedar]

Stephen Hawking told Diane Sawyer that when it comes to reconciling science and religion, there is only one outcome: "science will win because it works."

"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Huff Po

[Dardedar]

From a freethinker's Facebook page:

- Reason not superstition
- Ethics not dogma
- Respect not worship
- Courage not fear
- Fact not myth
- Morality not religion
- Clarity not delusion
- Good not god
- Skeptic not cynic
- Pragmatism not ideology

[Dardedar]

.
Jesus gets roasted by Zeus:

***
Touchdown Jesus On Fire, Ohio Statue Destroyed By Lightning

(AP) MONROE, Ohio — A six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ with his arms raised along a highway was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm Monday night and burned to the ground, police said.

The "King of Kings" statue, one of southwest Ohio's most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.

The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m., Monroe police dispatchers said.

The sculpture, 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.

[Savonarola]

Jesus gets roasted by Zeus:

How do people of different belief systems respond?

An atheist: "Jesus gets roasted by Zeus."
A Muslim: "It is a sign from Allah that idolatry is a sin."
A Christian: "It is a sign from God that He wants a bigger statue."

Bonus relevant media:
"Big Butter Jesus" by Heywood Banks

aftermath photo:

[Doug]

In a stunning move by the Vatican, the classic Dan Aykroyd-John Belushi comedy film "The Blues Brothers" was declared a "Catholic classic" alongside more pious films such as "The Ten Commandments" and "The Passion of the Christ."

The announcement was made in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, corresponding with 30th anniversary of the release of the film.

Read more: See here.

[Dardedar]

"The Blues Brothers" was declared a "Catholic classic"

DAR
Well, they were "on a mission from God."

[Doug]

While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.

State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.

"Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."

The resolution names Sunday as a statewide day of prayer in Louisiana and calls on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast "to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood."

CNN Article Here.

[Doug]

June 27) -- The crucifix is the defining symbol of Christianity, a constant reminder to the faithful of the sacrifice and suffering endured by Jesus Christ for humanity. But an extensive study of ancient texts by a Swedish pastor and academic has revealed that Jesus may not have died on a cross, but instead been put to death on another gruesome execution device.

Gunnar Samuelsson -- a theologian at the University of Gothenburg and author of a 400-page thesis on crucifixion in antiquity -- doesn't doubt that Jesus died on Calvary hill. But he argues that the New Testament is in fact far more ambiguous about the exact method of the Messiah's execution than many Christians are aware.

"When the Gospels refer to the death of Jesus, they just say that he was forced to carry a "stauros" out to Calvary," he told AOL News. Many scholars have interpreted that ancient Greek noun as meaning "cross," and the verb derived from it, "anastauroun," as implying crucifixion. But during his three-and-a-half-year study of texts from around 800 BC to the end of the first century AD, Samuelsson realized the words had more than one defined meaning.

"'Stauros' is actually used to describe a lot of different poles and execution devices," he says. "So the device described in the Gospels could have been a cross, but it could also have been a spiked pole, or a tree trunk, or something entirely different." In turn, "anastauroun" was used to signify everything from the act of "raising hands to suspending a musical instrument."

The manner in which Jesus died is further thrown into question by Samuelsson's discovery that crucifixion may have been an unusual form of punishment in the Roman Empire. Descriptions of crucifixions contained in the thousands of Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Greek manuscripts he examined most commonly referred to dead prisoners being placed on some form of suspension device, or living captives skewered on stakes. The first century Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, for example, wrote about seeing a great many prisoners of war on "crosses" after one campaign. But the scribe then describes how a large number of the dead had been impaled.

"If you search for ancient texts that specifically mention the act of crucifixion [as we understand it today]" he says, "you will end up with only two or three examples."

AOL News

[Dardedar]

June 27) Jesus may not have died on a cross, but instead been put to death on another gruesome execution device.[/b]

DAR
Very interesting! The Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the Stake theory and purposely dismiss the Cross theory as a later invented pagan scheme. My dad, with his left over JW beliefs was saying something about this and I told him I was skeptical, noting that my understanding was that the mainstream "accepted" scholarly knowledge on this was that it was a crucifix. I told him I would look into it but never managed to muster up the interest. I am glad to see that there is a good case for ambiguity here. Which of course goes along with every other claim regarding the life of Jesus.

If I remember right, I think Dan Barker has also, in his book, made a case for a stake instead of a cross.

D.