Tulare County Atheists

From Joe.My.God, and Salon:

Recently, the Saudis have issued a fatwa that forces women who come into contact with unrelated men on a regular basis to breastfeed them so that they can be considered “relatives” and not potential lovers.

Apparently the men aren’t required to actually feed at the breast, the women are instructed to pump their milk into a glass, and give it to the men.  (I’m sure there’s some disappointment with that arrangement, but it IS a repressive, inane superstition.)  The drinking of the breast milk somehow makes the men “related” to the women.

It is common for sisters to breast feed their nephews so that they and their daughters will not have to cover their faces in front of them when they get older. The snazzy term for this is called “breast milk sibling.”

Now, not all the leaders in this issue are of one mind about the procedure.  Apparently a sheik over there, Abi Ishaq Al Huwaini,  has decided that the milk must be suckled directly from the breast, and it since it takes 5 feedings for the nephew thing to come into effect, I think we all see where this is going.

Go check out the Salon article, it’s a good one!  Thanks to Joe.My.God for the lead!

From Pharyngula:

The folks over at the Urban Dictionary have battened upon the word “atheist”, and much hilarity follows. There is one reasonable definition in the bunch, and the rest are mostly indignant complaints by theists.

See PZ Myer’s entire post here.

What was it that the Bible says about praying?  Oh yeah:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.  ⁶But thou,when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret”  – Matthew 6:5-6

Perhaps some one should show this passage to the jerkasses who interrupted the Exeter High School graduation by shouting the Lord’s Prayer at the graduates. How better to show your devotion to your deity than to do exactly what he told you not to do.  That’ll show all them godless heathens!  Do they really think that every single student there is exactly the same kind of Christian that they are?  How about the ones who aren’t even Christian?  What about any Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan or even (God forbid!) atheist students who were graduating?  How many of them believe that the Lord is their shepherd?  I am always fascinated by the tendency of the Religious Right to be so eager to “defend their rights” from their “oppressors” that they don’t notice (or care?) that they are trampling all over the actual rights of everyone else.

Meanwhile, let’s hear it for the Visalia and Tulare school districts.  It’s good to see that some districts see that there should be some kind of separation between church and state.

“Drill, baby, drill!” – Sarah Palin, John McCain, Fox News, et al

“Government isn’t the solution, government’s the problem!” - Ronald Reagan

Read more »

Friendly Atheist has a good article about Brother Jeb and Sister Cindy and a recent protest/preaching done at the University of Arizona.  The above picture was from that incident.  Another preaching opportunity by Jeb was at the University of Oregon, where the students there took a different approach.  Read about it here.

So what’s a fine Christian teacher to do when she finds out another teacher, an atheist, is speaking to her class about atheism?  Well, what else?  Sprinkle holy water on her!  That’ll fix her!

PZ Myers, at his blog Pharyngula, reports two teachers at a Pompano, Florida school,  assaulting a third over her atheism.  See his report here, and the link to the original story at the Broward Palm Beach New Times. The Christians were escorted off the campus and told not to return while the district investigates, and presumably the atheist teacher was provided a towel.

The event occurred in March, and details have been scarce, since school districts won’t talk about “personnel” matters.

From the Discover Magazine blog, Bad Astronomy -

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

The History Channel recently aired a program, The Real Face of Jesus, that purported to produce a three dimensional image of the man depicted in the Shroud of Turin.

The Secular Web has posted an article by Gregory S. Paul, that discusses the image, and explains how it cannot be an image of a real person, unless that person was 6′  3″  tall, 175 pounds, arms of exceptionally different lengths, and a cranial capacity not seen since Homo Erectus walked the Earth!

Also discussed in the article is the problem of the hands placed over the genitals, a position not possible for a dead body to maintain once lain on a flat surface.

The dimensions of the person depicted in the Shroud elicits the following commentary -

If Jesus had the proportions of the image in the shroud, then he was a severely deformed and pathological person who would have cut a shocking figure as he walked down the streets and paths of the Holy Land. Exceptionally tall for his time and place, his rather narrow head was so shrunken and low browed that it would have indicated a unique form of hypocephaly so serious that it would have impaired his mental function, leaving his intellectual performance similar to that of protohuman. Overly long arms would have hung at his sides, with one exceptionally elongated, the other less so because of an atrophied lower arm. It is hard to see how such bizarre attributes would have not been mentioned in an account of his life, assuming anyone bothered to record it considering the circumstances. Because the proportions of the shroud image are essentially impossible, the figure cannot represent that of an actual person.

The entire explanation, by an expert in the artistic display of the human form, discusses why this artifact must be a forgery, perpetrated for unknown reasons, but perhaps part of the illicit trade in relics through the centuries.

The entire article is available at the Secular Web.

UPDATE:  5/28/2010   Another interesting look at the legitimacy of the Shroud, at The Daily Mail.