Random Pedantry
Mormons Don’t Want To Be Misunderstood
That’s the headline on a piece in the Boston Globe about how the Mormons are all upset over the new HBO show, “Big Love.” (Plot: Renegade Mormon husband has three wives. “I Dream of Jeannie” times three!) Anyway, the poor old crazy Mormons are worried people will get the wrong idea about their religion. They [...]
Come on, let’s all get happy
Updated 2/10/06: now with a better illustration of the new dinosaur, courtesy Jyllands-Posten. Isn’t this a gorgeous animal? Sometimes, when the world is too much with us — late and soon, getting and spending, hating cartoons — it’s a relief to plunge one’s head back into the Happy World of Science. This beautiful creature, as [...]
No, Reagan Did Not Win the Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis has a new book out called The Cold War: A New History, in which he eulogizes Reagan as a visionary and the winner of the Cold War. Salon’s review of the book offers the following tidbit: When John Lewis Gaddis, a history professor and expert on the conflict, teaches Yale undergraduates about [...]
Religions Evolve, Part 2: Islam
In “Religions Evolve, Part 1,” I offered up 10 random truths about Christianity. In that post, I listed 10 well-accepted conclusions about Christianity that have emerged from the past two centuries of scholarship. Now I’ll try to do the same for Islam — except I’ve got 17 random truths, and the scholarship is more controversial. [...]
Religions Evolve, Part 1: Christianity
P.Z. Myers is lamenting that a new myth-busting documentary from Richard Dawkins isn’t available here in Godbag America. Seeing as I’m a random pedant with an interest in this sort of thing, I’ve decided to offer up 10 Random Truths about Christianity. Next up: Islam, and then Judaism!
A Godbag By Any Other Name; or, Adventures in Synchronicity
Yesterday afternoon I was reading H.L. Mencken’s dispatches from the Scopes trial. Yesterday evening I was reading Ibn al-Rawandi on the historicity of Islam. Note these two passages: H.L. Mencken on the Christian fundamentalist mindset: “[These] people are simply unable to imagine a man who rejects the literal authority of the Bible. The most they [...]
