1. Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Comment #206934 by altopelirrojo on July 9, 2008 at 1:52 am

When I was in the Navy, I was still Mormon. Sometimes others would talk to me about my beliefs. But most of the people around me were smart and very open-minded. I suspect that if I had been an atheist at the time it would have been a fairly similar experience. I have a lot of complaints about the Navy, but as far as I know they're stance on religious issues is not one of them. At official ceremonies, one of the established customs is to have the chaplain say prayers, but I don't see that as too threatening. As far as I could see, chaplains don't proselytize , and their main job is to help morale. Does anything think that chaplains paid with public funds constitute a violation of the Establishment clause? I'm not sure.

2. McDonald's Makes Jesus Cry

Comment #206851 by altopelirrojo on July 8, 2008 at 10:16 pm

Jesus (R-Nz.)

I'm pretty sure Jesus was an Independent. No Democrat or Republican would ever say the kind of stuff he said. I'm pretty sure he couldn't get elected President today. But, then again, Jefferson and Lincoln couldn't either. On the other hand, this scripture suggests that perhaps he was a Republican.

but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me."

3. Teaching Evolution in Mexico: Preaching to the Choir

Comment #206362 by altopelirrojo on July 8, 2008 at 10:00 am

decius,

I didn't grow up or attend school in a "mormon state." I went to school in Maine. I took biology like everyone else in high school and graduated at the top of my class. If any of my science teachers ever mentioned the Columbian Exchange, or even really tried to teach the theory of evolution, it either must not have been an important part of the class, or else it must have been drowned out in my consciousness by the constant repetitions of "I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God" at church. I remembered the words "xylem" and "phloem" though. That's what really matters, apparently. Somehow I got straight A's in high school without ever trying to avoid hard classes, and somehow I was taken by surprise when years later I learned that there were no horses in America when Columbus arrived.

It was a public school, not in the Bible belt, and at the time I thought it was a pretty good school. Guess not.

4. Teaching Evolution in Mexico: Preaching to the Choir

Comment #206246 by altopelirrojo on July 8, 2008 at 7:37 am

decius,

Yes, you're right that you have to throw out many branches of science in order to believe in mormonism. Unfortunately, the majority of Mormons will never hear, ever, that horses had been extinct in America for thousands of years until Columbus showed up. They will never hear, ever, that there is no archaeological evidence to support the book of mormon. The only Mormons familiar with this information are those who are into Mormon apologetics, which has a shameful ability to reconcile anything and resolve anything with the weakest of arguments. I think I'm just lucky that I stumbled upon Jared Diamond before I stumbled on Mormon apologetics.

5. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #205766 by altopelirrojo on July 7, 2008 at 7:14 pm

I'm disappointed. I was expecting to find Yahweh on this list, right there where it belongs between Xochiquetzal and Yam.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_myth_gods_index.htm

At least they put Jesus where he belongs.

6. Teaching Evolution in Mexico: Preaching to the Choir

Comment #205728 by altopelirrojo on July 7, 2008 at 6:24 pm

I think I can speak about Mormonism a little bit. I spent the first 25 years or so of my life as a Mormon, and served a two-year mission in Mexico. It was only a couple of years ago that I started to learn, quite by accident, the amazing number of problems with Mormon history and beliefs.

No, Mormons are not fundamentalists in the same way as the "God hates fags" fundies we hear about so much. Nor do Mormons believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible in the way that we would normally think of it. However, Mormons do believe that Adam and Eve were real people, living in the Garden of Eden (in Missouri, by the way). Mormons do believe that the stories of the flood, the tower of Babel, the patriarchs, and the Exodus are literal history. Where Mormons differ is in recognizing that the text has been fundamentally altered since it was originally written down, so that the words we have in the Bible now are not necessarily the same as the ones that were originally written. But Mormons do believe as a matter of doctrine that the original writers of the Bible were divinely inspired and the words of the Bible originally contained the absolute truth from God. The changes that have happened to the biblical text are one of the main reasons that Mormons use to justify the additional LDS scriptures, including the Book of Mormon, that, unlike the Bible, Mormons believe were preserved by God in a pristine state.

Mormons have a difficult relationship with evolution. Many of the early leaders of the church were fundamentally and strongly opposed to any theory that denied the special creation of humans, and many harsh words were pronounced against the theory of evolution. However, the modern leaders of the church have learned a lesson from the past, and are now quite reluctant to say anything that might require them to actually take a position that could get them in trouble later. The Mormon church has no official position on evolution. However, the official doctrines of the church make it extremely difficult for any member of the church to really believe in evolution. As a Mormon, I thought that there was a way to reconcile evolution with special creation, but only because I didn't actually understand what evolution was, and I suspect that this is very common for Mormons.

The general tendency for modern Mormons is to hold on to their strange, deluded beliefs while presenting to the world a nice, clean appearance that is as normal and mainstream as possible.

7. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #205721 by altopelirrojo on July 7, 2008 at 6:04 pm

Evolution is a crazy delusion, and Harun Yahya has proven it. No one has ever found a fossil of a crockasquirrel, and therefore evolution is false. The proof is close to the bottom of this absolutely true web page:

http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_02.php

All the living creatures in the fossil record appear intact and in their perfect forms. For instance, before crocodiles and squirrels, there exist no fossils belonging to any strange creature partly resembling a crocodile, and in other parts to a squirrel or other living creatures. Squirrels have always remained squirrels, and crocodiles have always remained crocodiles. All these facts reveal that the claim of the theory of evolution, that "Living beings have gradually evolved over millions of years of time" is simply a product of imagination.

Take that, evolution.

8. Teaching Evolution in Mexico: Preaching to the Choir

Comment #205487 by altopelirrojo on July 7, 2008 at 11:10 am

¡Qué interesante! I find it very interesting to note the difference between the mostly Protestant United States, which is full of creationists, and the mostly Catholic Latin America, in which there are very few creationists. The most interesting part is that the only two problems Professor Lazcano has had with religious opposition to evolution were with missionaries from the United States.

9. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #202326 by altopelirrojo on July 1, 2008 at 9:58 am

Actually, I think this is an interesting article, and the author makes some pretty decent points. Certainly, he's all too willing to assume points of Catholic dogma that he's already accepted as articles of faith. But Catholics have as much right to imagine what aliens would be like as the rest of us do. At least he knows something about science.

But what I actually struggle with is his decision to convert from atheism to Catholicism. I think the biggest clue he gives is here:

Because I was hostile to religion, and believed, all too gullibly, every slander that could be voiced against it, I had convinced myself that religion was fundamentally irrational, an enemy of progress, and something fundamentally antithetical to the modern world-view in which all science fiction stories take place...While modern philosophers idle away their time deconstructing the meaning of language, and telling us nothing means anything...

As an atheist, he gullibly accepted everything that anyone could ever say about the evil caused by religion, and then he read too much Foucault, and when he realized that there is more to the world than the postmodernists want us to believe, he overcorrected and accepted everything that the Catholics had to say.