August 22, 2009 | 11:56 am

What would Darwin do?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

I saw this headline—“Must science declare a holy war on religion?”—in the Los Angeles Times and I knew before looking at the byline for this op-ed that it had been written by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. The two write The Intersection blog for Discover and have a forthcoming book that argues that The New Atheists have gotten their rhetoric and strategy all wrong.

“Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future” is not a defense of God but instead an attack on the decision by atheist activists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris to declare war on God.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum wrote in the LA Times:

The United States does not boast a very healthy relationship between its scientific community and its citizenry. The statistics on public scientific illiteracy are notorious—and they’re at their worst on contentious, politicized issues such as climate change and the teaching of evolution. About 46% of Americans in polls agree with this stunning statement: “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

In this context, the New Atheists have chosen their course: confrontation. And groups like the NCSE have chosen the opposite route: Work with all who support the teaching of evolution regardless of their beliefs, and attempt to sway those who are uncertain but perhaps convincible.

Despite the resultant bitterness, however, there is at least one figure both sides respect—the man who started it all: Charles Darwin. What would he have done in this situation?

It turns out that late in life, when an atheist author asked permission to dedicate a book to Darwin, the great scientist wrote back his apologies and declined. For as Darwin put it, “Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science.”

Darwin and Dawkins differ by much more than a few letters, then—something the New Atheists ought to deeply consider.

What would Darwin do? Yeah, I spotted it too.

Interesting. Anyway, you can read the rest here.

The Dicky Dawkins rap is after the jump:

Read more of this post

August 21, 2009 | 1:46 pm

Obama greets Muslims on Ramadan eve

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The New Yorker

President Obama must be a Muslim ...

On behalf of the American people – including Muslim communities in all fifty states – I want to extend best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.

Ramadan is the month in which Muslims believe the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, beginning with a simple word – iqra. It is therefore a time when Muslims reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God.

Like many people of different faiths who have known Ramadan through our communities and families, I know this to be a festive time – a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared.  But I also know that Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and perform tarawih prayers at night, reciting and listening to the entire Koran over the course of the month.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.

For instance, fasting is a concept shared by many faiths – including my own Christian faith – as a way to bring people closer to God, and to those among us who cannot take their next meal for granted. And the support that Muslims provide to others recalls our responsibility to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere. For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

You can watch Obama’s video address here.

3 Comments — Leave your comment

August 21, 2009 | 12:15 am

Gay scientists isolate Christian gene

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Web Guy just pointed me to this revealing report from CNN ... N ... N.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 19, 2009 | 6:03 pm

Hip hip hooray for the Crusades?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A little historical revisionism regarding the two centuries Christians spent trying to capture the Holy Land from Muslim:

Rodney Stark, 75, a professor of social sciences at Baylor University, says the crusaders were not all that bad, and certainly not barbaric, greedy warmongers.

In his new book “God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades,” the 1996 nominee for the Pulitzer Prize depicts soldiers who truly believed their military service under God would cover over a multitude of sins—namely all that murdering and marauding required of them in the tumultuous Middle Ages.

“I get tired of people apologizing for the Crusades, like Christians were a bunch of dirty looters that went over there and killed everybody,” Stark said. “It just wasn’t true.”

Of course, apologies on the subject have been many. Pope John Paul II expressed regret for the medieval violence in 2000, the same year Wheaton College, alma mater of preacher Billy Graham—who made evangelistic “crusades” famous—changed their mascot from the Crusaders to the Thunder.

Stark argues that Muslims asked for it, that the Crusades were the first military response to Muslim terrorists and their looming, advancing Islamic empire. “It wasn’t like they were harmless, little people minding their own business and tending their sheep,” Stark said.

Indeed, Islamic powers were mighty before the Crusades, and bounced back after Christian attempts at conquest ultimately failed.

“I suspect that Muslims will hate the book, and I’m sorry about that,” Stark said. “That’s just the way the world is. I make no apologies or real accusations.”

I think we call that blaming the victim? Maybe that’s different than saying the Jews provoked the Nazis, but I don’t see Stark getting any Eid invitations.

Read the rest from RNS here.

3 Comments — Leave your comment

August 19, 2009 | 1:22 pm

God bless this singer at Dodger Stadium

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Loose hook here, but for many baseball is religion, the Dodgers are God’s chosen and this seventh-inning tradition is supposed to endear our Lord to our nation.

Well, it could have been worse:

Read more of this post

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 19, 2009 | 11:40 am

Bring on the Basterds

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Reel Intelligence was a blog started by two of my friends that reviewed movies the author’s had never seen. The shtick, and it was one I enjoyed, was to get excited or exasperated with movie trailers and let readers know based on that approach whether a movie was going to be worth watching. More often than not, they weren’t.

Sadly, Reel Intelligence died an inglorious death two years ago. But it was resurrected last week and re-branded Reel Stupid—yeah, I liked the old name better. Yesterday they offered their opinion on “Inglourious Basterds.”

Listening to Brad Pitt’s speech in the preview, I found myself nodding in agreement. Go in behind enemy lines, blend in, start assassinating Nazis, have them feel the pain that they deal out…makes sense. Then why didn’t they actually do this during WW2?  Oh, right, because it’s impossible.

For one, Pitt suggests they will be “dropped into France, dressed as civilians”, but how does that really help?

Nazi Soldier: “Gee Capt’n, a lot of us Nazis have been getting killed in this area, and I was thinking about checking out that cluster of blood-splattered, Jewish-looking guys over there.”

Nazi Captain: “No no no, those are French Civilians!  We’re Nazis, dagnabbit – we can’t go around violating human rights with unlawful searches and seizure.”

And I may be crazy, but if you have the capacity to send in soldiers that will kill 100 Nazis each, behind enemy lines, without tactical support…wouldn’t you want to send in more than EIGHT?

I’ve written a bit about Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, and unlike Reel Stupid Troy, I’m itching to see it this weekend. It’s going to be “Kill Bill,” with Bill being a bunch of Jew-hating Nazis. I don’t care if it’s unrealistic. It’ll be therapeutic.

The Jewish Journal also has a nice cover package this weekend on Tarantino, producer Lawrence Bender and co-star Eli Roth, director of such “torture porn” as “Hostel.”

As you’ve probably heard, this movie is more “kosher porn.”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 18, 2009 | 3:58 pm

From Skid Row to Bel Air Presbyterian

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From LA's Homeless Blog

Here’s an interesting confluence of people and places from my life: a former colleague from the Daily News writing a profile of my church for the Christian magazine I write for. In other words, Troy Anderson has a piece in Christianity Today about Bel Air Presbyterian’s efforts to help the homeless in Los Angeles:

On any given night, 73,000 people in LA are homeless—1 in 10 of the 744,000 homeless people nationwide. Living amid such extremes of wealth and poverty, [the Rev. Mark] Brewer talked to his elders—many of whom remembered former President Reagan’s heart and generosity for the homeless on skid row—about what the church could do to engage and bless the community.

“How can you have the wealth that you have here and have this situation?” Brewer asks.

Describing Los Angeles as a 21st-century Babylon, Brewer draws on the prophet Jeremiah telling the exiled Israelites to seek the “peace and prosperity” of the pagan city. In 2006, believing the Lord was calling him to help these homeless families, Brewer founded Imagine LA, whose goal is to mobilize the faith community to sponsor and mentor homeless families to get into long-term housing and become self-sufficient.

Since the pilot program launched in late 2007, three churches and two synagogues have sponsored five homeless families. But dozens of major churches and synagogues are now coming on board, and Brewer expects the number of family sponsorships to grow to 30 by the end of this year, and to 200 by 2011. The program is attracting national interest because it seeks to address some of the root causes of homelessness—primarily unemployment, domestic violence, and substance abuse—and provide “a solution, not a Band-Aid,” says Jill Govan Bauman, executive director of Imagine LA.

Read the rest here.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 18, 2009 | 2:44 pm

Muslim activist Salam Al-Marayati joins the Huffington Post

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Salam Al-Marayati, the head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, wrote his first piece for the Huffington Post last month. It’s focus: A defense of what it means to be American Muslims.

He concludes:

America is a home for Muslims. Muslim extremists and Muslim-haters agree on one thing, that America is alien to Islam and vice versa. On the contrary, Muslims regard America as a home for them and for their religion. One scholar defined Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) as the place where Muslims gain security. In many ways, Muslims are more secure in America and can practice their faith freely in America than any other country in the world, including any Muslim country. I am an American.

Read the entire piece here.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 18, 2009 | 11:47 am

“Family Guy”—from banned episode to canceled show?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

One of my favorite “South Park” episodes is a two-parter known as “Cartoon Wars.” The premise is that the entire country is in a panic because the writers of “Family Guy” are refusing to allow Fox to censor an episode of the show depicting the Prophet Muhammad. (You can imagine where this part of the storyline came from.) Cartman, being the snake he is, sees this as an opportunity to get “Family Guy” off the air for good.

“All it takes to kill a show forever is get one episode pulled,” Cartman tells Kyle as they pedal their Big Wheels to L.A. “If we convince the network to pull this episode for the sake of Muslims, then the Catholics can demand a show they don’t like get pulled and then people with disabilities can demand another show get pulled and so on and so on, until Family Guy is no more—it’s exactly what happened to Laverne & Shirley.”

It appears now, though, that Cartman’s logic was faulty. Shocking, I know. But it turns out that Fox actually has pulled an episode of “Family Guy” and probably will again:

So when a scheduled episode from the upcoming season on the subject of abortion—“Partial Terms of Endearment” by staff writer Danny Smith—ran afoul of Fox censors, showrunner Seth MacFarlane did the only logical thing: he scheduled a table read of the episode before a live audience in the heart of Hollywood. The reading took place last night.

The last time MacFarlane found himself censored by the network was in 2000, a year after Family Guy premiered on Fox, and just before it was canceled for the first of two times. (It was revived in 2005 after blockbuster DVD sales and a popular syndication run on the Cartoon Network; McFarlane’s most recent deal was for $100 million. As one of the writers said at last night’s event, “We argued at the time there weren’t Nielsen boxes in either dorm rooms or prisons, and those were both big demographics for us.”) That was the episode “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein,” which, despite being spiked, showed up in the Season 3 DVD set. In that episode, family patriarch Peter Griffin, realizing that stockbrokers and accountants invariably have names like Ian Greenstein and Larry Rosenblatt, seeks to convert his teenage son Chris to Judaism so he’ll earn a better living. “Is there anything you people can’t do—besides manual labor?” he asks one of the Chosen People.

But it was the show’s elaborate musical number—known as a cutout in showbiz parlance—that had Fox in a tizzy: a takeoff on “When You Wish Upon a Star” titled “I Need a Jew,” which included the offending lyrics: “Though by many they’re abhorred/Hebrew people I’ve adored/Even though they killed my Lord/I need a Jew.”

Whoa.

Read the rest and watch a video of the “Partial Terms” table reading here.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 17, 2009 | 11:04 am

Prosperity Gospel gets rich in hard times

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve made no secret about my disgust for the Gospel of Wealth, which is, in fact, not gospel at all. It turns out that even in hard times—maybe especially in hard times—some Christians are inclined to believe that if they give above and beyond the tithe expected of them that God will cause them to prosper.

From the NYT:

Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.

Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.

The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.

Fear ... also known as skepticism and/or sound judgment. Read the rest here.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

August 17, 2009 | 10:29 am

Gay marriage’s new form of protest

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s a kiss in:

The Mormon church’s vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay rights activism, including a nationwide “kiss-in” Saturday.

The event comes after gay couples here and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.

“I don’t think that kiss would have turned out to be the kiss heard round the world if it were not for Proposition 8,” said Ash Johnsdottir, organizer of the Salt Lake City Kiss-In.

That “kiss heard round the world” was mentioned here last month.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 16, 2009 | 12:13 am

The original Jewish OG

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Everybody’s talking now about “Inglourious Basterds,” and for good reason, but let’s not forget about the original Jewsploitation film.

“Shabbat Shalom, motherf—-er!”

0 Comments — Leave your comment