Philip Roth on Religion & God

CBS News Sunday Morning, 10-3-2010
Entire Interview HERE

BBC Newsnight - Stephen Hawking

Thanksgiving Prayer William S. Burroughs

Shirin Ebadi - Separate Human Rights for Muslims?

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi rejects cultural relativism and the proposal of an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Ebadi says that, without a universal standard, basic human rights cannot be protected.

Conservative Attorney Ted Olson on Gay Marriage

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!! This is why when you talk with someone obviously much smarter than yourself, you sit down, shut-up, listen and learn.



INTERVIEW PART 2

MEDIAITE: Ted Olson Upholds Same Sex Marriage on Fox News Sunday – Brilliantly
NEWSWEEK: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
NEWSWEEK [VIDEO]: Ted Olson: 'Why Im Taking on Californias Gay Marriage Ban'

Maldives: First Man to Renounce Islam in almost 500 Years Threatened with Death

In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first time in many hundreds of years that a Maldivian has publicly renounced Islam, since Sultan King Hassan IX converted to Christianity in 1552 and was deposed. ARTICLE

PZ Myers Points Out: Here's a real twist, though: The Maldives is on the UN Human Rights Council. I like the idea of an international tribunal like the UN, but this is the kind of insanity that makes it a joke.

Hero of The Week: Fareed Zakaria Criticizes Media Attention On Obama Oil Spill Emotion

What the Hell was That? Someone speaking logically in the main-stream media? This is definitely not a form of retoric that you will hear on Fox News.

Sir Ian Mckellen Rips The Bible

Einstein's Letter on Religion

[An abridgement of the letter from Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind from Princeton in January 1954, a year before his death]

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes

Yours, A. Einstein

Letter Source
Letter History

Hero of The Week: Jen McCreight Creator of Boobquake!

An Islamic cleric's suggestion that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes has drawn thousands to join an American student's busty bid to shake up the world -- by revealing cleavage.

Jen McCreight is the creator of Boobquake, an event scheduled for Monday, which has already garnered the support of more than 40,000 people on Facebook.

Article
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2939431





Q&A with Boobquake founder Jennifer McCreight

Facebook Page

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Philip Pullman answers a question about his freedom of speech, Really Amazing.

Hero of The Week: Anthony Weiner "The Republican Party Is a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of an Insurance Industry"

The House of Representatives debated the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, legislation that would repeal the 65 year exemption health insurance companies have from anti-trust regulations*.

*(United States antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are designed to encourage competition in the marketplace.)

The vote was 406-19, with most Republicans siding with majority Democrats against a widely unpopular industry which has been under attack by Democrats and consumer advocates for recent rate hikes.

Obviously almost everyone thought this was an easy case, but to those 19 congressmen who voted against (all being republicans of course) Rep. Anthony Weiner had this to say,



I love it when Weiner says "You really don’t want to go there, Mr. Lungren."

I wish I could see this kind of chutzpah from Obama...

Article
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/24/anthony-weiner-subsidiary/