Mar

30

Beware the Believers

March 30, 2008 by Brandon | Leave a Comment

This was floating around on various sites today, including PZ’s blog. Simply hilarious.

Mar

30

Muslims Outnumber Catholics

March 30, 2008 by Brandon | Leave a Comment

The Vatican says they are no longer the largest single religious denomination in the world, and that Muslims have outnumbered them.

Hold on there! Worry not, you papist praisers, you are technically still the largest single religious denomination in the world. The Vatican is forgetting that the Muslim world is also divided, just as Christendom is.

Islam is divided into two major denominations, that being Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. There are a few other minor denominations, but then we also have to take into consideration that Sunni and Shia Muslims are divided even more into other subgroups.

So while Muslims do indeed outnumber Catholics, the Catholics remain the largest single religious denomination.

Mar

29

Jesus Freaks

March 29, 2008 by Brandon | 2 Comments

This post has been a long time coming. It’s going to be long, I suspect, so get ready to do some reading…

Background Info

In my last semester in college, fall of 2007, I had a few art courses with a fellow artist and friend of mine. She happens to be a Christian and we’d often get into some heated discussions about her beliefs. That semester, I eventually created a short “documentary” for my epistemology course I had. I asked my Christian friend if she’d mind taking part. She was a good sport about it and agreed to the interview, which you can watch through the previous link I provided.

Not too long after, she kept mentioning that I should read this book she’s read because she thought it would give me some insight on her reasons for believing. I eventually agreed to read the book, only if she would agree to read a book of my selection (Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation). We swapped, and she presented me with a rather large book (368 pages) in comparison to my suggestion, which was 96 pages. It is titled, Jesus Freaks.

The book is basically a collection of stories about modern, mostly teenage, martyrs.

The Story

It took me a while before I actually bothered to start reading the book. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I forced myself to start. Unfortunately, I only made it through the first story. In fact, it technically wasn’t even the first story, but a sort of introduction. It was extremely short and didn’t even cover the entire first page. It was still a story, and it is titled, “Yes, I Believe In God.”

She was 17 years old. He stood glaring at her, his weapon before her face.

“Do you believe in God?”

She paused. It was a life-or-death question. “Yes, I believe in God.”

“Why?” asked her executioner. But he never gave her the chance to respond.

The teenage girl lay dead at his feet.

The book then says how this story didn’t take place in ancient times or in the Middle Ages, or in some other more intolerant country… no, it took place in a once unknown high school in Littleton, Colorado on April 20th, 1999. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Columbine High School?

The Research

I read this first story and stopped right there. Why? I was skeptical. Something just didn’t seem to add up with this.

So I did a little research into the story of this girl who died for believing in God. Here’s what I discovered.

The story is in regard to one Cassie Bernall, who lost her life on that day at the hands of Dylan Klebold, one of the gunman. The story apparently came into being when one of the students made the claim that he thought he heard the voice of Cassie respond to the gunman’s question, “Do you believe in God? It grew legs and ran and Cassie’s mother, Misty Bernall, wrote a book detailing the events as factual.

Several months later, on September 19th, 1999, Salon Magazine published an article which called the story into question. Other papers followed. The local Rocky Mountain News said five days later that another student, Emily Wyant, was actually crouched next to Cassie she (Cassie) was shot. Emily survived and reported that she never heard a question asked of Cassie, or her respond. She was, however, praying.

Craig Scott was the one who initially told the story of hearing Cassie’s voice respond to the gunman’s question. When asked to point out in the library where it took place, he pointed to a location where another girl, not Cassie, was. Her name is Valeen Schnurr. She had initially been shot and was hiding under the table, praying, when the gunman asked her if she believed in God. She responded, “Yes, I believe in God.” She was asked why, and she responded. The gunman then left her alone. She survived and is alive and well today.

Considering that I knew that this story was once accepted as being true, if only for a few months, I felt that I should just make sure when this Jesus Freaks book was published. Perhaps it was published before the news broke that it wasn’t true.

Unfortunately, I can’t get a fixed date for it’s publication. The book I have was printed by Albury Publishing. I’ve found it being dated at “1999″ and “January 1999,” in which case I’m not sure how the book was published four months before the events of Columbine.

Another publisher, Bethany House Publishers, also published the book up until 2001.

The book’s site does not make mention of the fact that this story is incorrect. The book has not been reprinted with the story retracted after it was proven false.

Amazon also has an Online Reader where you can actually read the page from the book if you so wish. Click on the “Excerpt” link on the left, then click on the right side of the page which is displayed to advance to page 17.

Get To The Point

Here we have a book which is presenting a lie as fact. And people, who are not willing to ask the questions I just did for this particular story, are buying it and believing this story long after the fact that it has been disproven. I say it is a lie because it doesn’t seem that the authors of the book have made an attempt to correct the story after it was proven false. They are presenting the story as being true. They claim all the stories in their book are true. Even if the book was published before the information came to light that the story was false, they never had any evidence or proof to say this story was indeed true, just the claims of a student who thought he heard a girl’s voice. Given the unimaginably stressful situation that he was in, I think people were too quick to believe him.

After reading the story and doing my research, I questioned several friends of mine, who are Christian, about what they thought of it. I explained that here is a book which is presenting a story as truth when it has been disproven. I asked them if this bothered them at all.

No. It didn’t bother any of them. They still saw value in a fake story about a girl who was killed for saying she believed in God.

Who cares that the girl of the story wasn’t killed for believing in God and in fact the girl who said she believed in God was spared.

Mar

29

Christian Nation

March 29, 2008 by Brandon | 2 Comments

This here is a comment from a person on Beliefnet.com discussing this article. I think it qualifies as an excellent example of fractal wrongness.

The $64 question is do I believe America is a “Christian Nation”? In some exepts I do we all believe in God, Jesus Christ in a form one way or another. As I believe Jesus was born on Christmas Day to the Virgin Mary & Joseph. Then He died on the Cross for our sins as we can have everlasting life when we face our beliefs.

I think it’s just hilarious, aside from the whole “we all believe in God and Jesus Christ” bit, this person thinks Jesus, if he did exist, was born on Christmas Day.

Mar

29

It’s Caturday!

March 29, 2008 by Brandon | Leave a Comment

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. Personally, I’m just a crazy cat guy. My friends say when I’m 80, I’ll probably have 50 cats living in my home. They are not exaggerating. Except to see a new cat every Saturday.

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What is Fractal Wrongness?

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

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