A US man has been discovered dead in his girlfriend's cat door, leaving authorities confused about his exact manner of death.
The man, Charles Tucker Junior, was using the animal entry to gain access to his girlfriend's home on Sunday morning when he became stuck, News4Jax reported.
Officials said his girlfriend made the bizarre discovery only hours after she ordered him out of her house.
Worth listening to is a collection of audio clips from a range of scientists and philosophers explaining what does and does not count as science.Read more!
The following is an interactive matrix examining the intersection of faith and politics on the stump as presidential hopefuls line up for their chance to win the White House in 2008. Issues range from abortion and public education to religious history and gay rights. Every candidate so far declared for office has been thoroughly researched for any mention of faith and its impact on their decision to reach a particular stance. Use the following matrix to explore how faith has been invoked as a part of their respective campaigns. (You'll have to go to the site to open the tool.)
It would be extremely handy, don't you agree, if a similar tool was made available for Australian election campaigns.
The extent to which the political centre of gravity is sinking deeper and deeper into the right-wing authoritarian quadrant is truly disturbing. Looking at the party's website (which basically resembles one long angry Letter to the Editor from Joe Incontinence Pad), I can understand how difficult it must have been for the Political Compass guys to place One Nation. They are undoubtedly authoritarian--well, let's just come right out and say it: they're protofascist--but in terms of economic policy they can be both left-wing and right-wing. (For instance, they're stridently anti-corporate: they even link to the Outfoxed website!) By the way, secularist potential One Nation voters be warned: your party advocates the teaching of Scripture and "Christian values" (whatever they are supposed to be) in public schools. And oil is--and this must be said in ALL CAPS, just like it is on the One Nation website--A RENEWABLE AND ABIOTIC FUEL."
1. An atheist US soldier serving in Iraq organises the first ever meeting of that country's chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, having dotted all the necessary 'i's and crossed all the necessary 't's. Of the four soldiers who attend this meeting, one turns out to be a Fundamentalist Christian army major, posing as a "freethinker." Said fundie proceeds to verbally harangue the other attendees--after he has ordered them to stand to attention--for "plotting against Christians" and "being disrespectful to other soldiers," and then shuts the meeting down. This actually happened.
2. A Muslim dentist in Britain has been accused of demanding that a female patient cover her head with a scarf in traditional Muslim fashion before he would treat her. (Austin Cline)
I don't know if there has been any coercion on the part of officers in the military. It may have occurred on occasion - I just don't know. However, if only one soul were saved as a result of the activities in the military, wouldn't it be worth it? All the wealth in the world isn't worth the value of a single soul. My point to Mr. Weinstein was this: Is he actually doing what God wants Him to do? Maybe the persons involved in the military are doing what God has asked them to do.
Browbeating and threatening non-theists: it is what Jesus would do!Read more!
The latest Bill Muehlenberg gong is awarded to Cyrus Brooks, vice-president of the Australian Church of Scientology, for taking advantage of a recent double-murder, involving a Sydney woman who stabbed her father and sister to death, to proselytise to the nation his faith-based objections to psychiatry, arguing on ABC radio that "modern psychiatry used many methods that were largely 'unproven' and psychiatric assumptions - such as chemical imbalances in the brain - simply did not exist." The murder suspect is a woman suffering psychosis who was denied psychiatric treatment because of her parents' Scientologist beliefs. Brooks' claims were immediately rebutted by Sydney University psychiatrist Chris Tennant:
It's so sad to hear the Flat-Earthers getting on the radio. The amount of research in terms of both treatment of depression and psychosis is as strong as any other medical of treatment--be it cancer, be it heart disease, be it whatever--it's the same methods, the same technologies are used in these sorts of studies. There are hundreds of studies that show the effectiveness of these drugs not only in curing symptoms, [. . .] but also in reducing the social impact including, dare I say it, issues of violence and things like assault and homicide when patients with psychosis are treated.
And yet again we have a clear demonstration of the dangers of magical thinking--of what can go wrong when one checks one's brains at the door of the "Free Personality Test" booth and embraces religious dogma at the expense of reason and evidence.
What is even more disconcerting is the fact that Scientology appears to be giving the Christian Right a run for its money regarding its theocratic ambitions. A 2005 Salon article documents the church's attempts to get anti-psychiatry legislation passed in various US states, and its anti-medication dogma taught in US public schools (see also this San Francisco Chronicle article). According to Salon,
you don't have to rely on critics to show that Scientology's attack on psychiatry is part of the church's crusade to rule society. In 1995, David Miscavige, the church's current leader, addressed the International Association of Scientologists in Copenhagen. He told the faithful that the church had two goals as the new millennium approached, dutifully noted by International Scientology News: "Objective one - place Scientology at the absolute center of society. Objective two - eliminate psychiatry in all its forms."
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge . . .
-- Charles Darwin
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