Monthly Archives: August 2010

Link bomb #4

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One in five Americans incorrectly believes that President Obama is a Muslim—more Americans than ever before. And that figure will likely grow now that Obama has expressed his (tepid) support for the Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Michael Voris of Real Catholic TV argues that democracy empowers the ignorant at the expense of the common good. I buy that. His alternative, however, is less palatable. Voris advocates a “Catholic monarchy.”

A GOP candidate for the Iowa House says AIDS is God’s punishment for the sin of homosexuality.

Main Street Plaza has a fascinating post about how few chapters in the Book of Mormon are cited by LDS leaders in conference talks. Half of the chapters contribute almost 90% of the citations!

NASA’s video of a recent space shuttle launch from the perspective of a rocket booster is awe-inspiring. Eat your heart out, Kubrick.

It appears the LDS Church is trying to buy up land in Manti, Utah that has traditionally been used as a free speech area during the Mormon Miracle Pageant.

A group of moms devised a constructive way to protest the hate speech of the Westboro Baptist Church—”Pennies in Protest.”

Wynn LeGrow is running against ultra-conservative incumbent Randy Forbes (R-VA). He recently told the press that he’s a “non-believer.” If he wins, LeGrow would be only the second admitted atheist in Congress, the first being Democrat Pete Stark of California.

The Deseret News reports that Mormons have a serious image problem. Five times as many people have a “strongly unfavorable” impression of Mormons than have a “strongly favorable” one. It’ll take more than an ad campaign to invert those sentiments.

Atheist blogger PZ Myers calls out futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil on his claim that we will be able to reverse-engineer the human brain within the decade. Kurzweil stands by his prediction.

Check out these charts of generational religion changes in Britain in the US. The “no religion” group gains the most in both countries.

YouTuber ProfMTH has a couple of videos explaining the legal reasoning behind Judge Walker’s decision that overturned Proposition 8.

David Silverman, Vice President of American Atheists, debates Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff over the memorial crosses for fallen troopers.

Listverse compiles the top 10 religious scandals in history. Another list of 10 worth reading is philosopher Bertrand Russell’s “Liberal Decalogue.”

On his show last week, Glenn Beck called Charles Darwin “the father of modern-day racism” and hinted that Native Americans are of Hebrew descent. I wonder where he got that notion…

Nearly a hundred soldiers were forced to clean their barracks for failing to attend a Christian concert at a Virginia military base.

The SHAFT site turns one year old!

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USU SHAFT first met as an official club two years ago. It wasn’t until last August, however, that we decided to launch this site. (Nick Venturella is the technical guru behind the site’s creation and upkeep).

The SHAFT site has been a success that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. It has strengthened our group’s sense of community and served as an important forum for critical religious dialogue. And the site largely owes its success to you, the readers. You voted it “Best New Blog” in the 2009 William Law X-Mormon Awards, and your continued readership and participation have made this among the most popular sites of its kind.

Here are some of the site’s stats over one year of activity:

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No more giant memorial crosses in Utah?

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According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

The tall crosses memorializing fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers will not come down anytime soon — even though a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that they violate the U.S. Constitution.

The decision, which holds implications for roadside memorial crosses across the nation, likely will be appealed by the state and the nonprofit group that erected themonuments.
They could either ask the full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. – http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50132157-76/crosses-utah-memorials-highway.html.csp

From what I understand, government land was being used to display 12-foot-high crosses donated by the private organization UHPA to honor officers that died near that location. The decision could still be appealed to higher courts, so this isn’t necessarily the final result. I suggest reading over the court’s decision for more details.

What do you guys think?

Phil Plait: “Don’t be a dick!”

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I mentioned Phil Plait‘s talk a while back in my post “On dialogue and changing minds.” The video of the talk was recently released. I was going to tuck it into another link bomb post, but I think it deserves to stand alone.

I actually disagree somewhat with Plait’s contention that we (atheists/skeptics) need diplomats, not warriors. As Greta Christina argued at the Secular Student Alliance conference, both are important. My approach is to try to balance the roles by being a ‘diplomatic warrior.’

Did the LDS Church model their ads after Scientology’s?

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This will be my last post about the “I am a Mormon” ad campaign, I promise. I have to share this video with you, though:

The above ad is from 2009 and was part of a Scientologist ad campaign. Now compare that to this more recent (and near-identical) LDS commercial. Granted, “I am…” campaigns are nothing new in advertising, and the LDS Church could have come up with theirs independently. Yet even the style of the ads is similar! It really looks as though the LDS Church took a page out of Scientology’s playbook. And there’s nothing egregious about that, I just find it amusing.

But in light of this and yesterday’s post, maybe I’m engaging in parallelomania—seeing parallels where none exist. What do you think?

Update: A friend of mine in the comments wrote that the “I’m a Mormon” ads were thought up in 2006. If true, they were probably not modeled after the Scientology ads, which didn’t air until 2009.

Pirates, buried treasure, and the Book of Mormon

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I’ve written before that Book of Mormon geography is elusive. LDS scholars place the Book of Mormon in a Mesoamerican setting, but it’s not a comfortable fit. The most compelling—or at least the most curious—correspondence between the Book of Mormon and real world geography, though, isn’t found in the American continents at all, but Africa.

The Comoros Islands are located off the east coast of Africa and just northwest of Madagascar. This small archipelago nation would have never caught my attention were it not for its capital: Moroni.

Now, the Mormon connection with the name Moroni is obvious, but the connection with Comoros is probably less so. Before the French colonized the islands in 1841, the Comoros Islands were known by its Arabic name “Camora.” And it’s this name that bears a resemblance to Cumorah, the hill where Moroni deposited the gold plates—a resemblance made all the more striking by the fact that in the first (1830) edition of the Book of Mormon, Cumorah was uniformly spelled “Camorah.”

Mere coincidence?

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