Tag: religion

Drinking Is Healthy

thanks, puritans.

Even as the CDC now recognizes the decisive benefits from moderate drinking, each such announcement is met by an onslaught of opposition and criticism. Noting that even drinking at non-pathological levels above recommended moderate limits gives you a better chance of a longer life than abstaining draws louder protests still. Yet that’s exactly what the evidence tells us.

Dismantling nonsense

This is amazing. So so awkward for the AGs from Indiana & Wisconsin. Posner is one of the most influential judges in the US. I always enjoy a good smackdown of dumb people. Especially dumb people in positions of power.

While lawyers for Wisconsin and Indiana attempted to defend their state’s marriage bans, Posner issued a series of withering bench slaps that unmasked anti-gay arguments as the silly nonsense that they are.

ISIS

vice reminds me of CNN, when they were actually good (in 1991). very impressive work.

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent 3 weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings.

The god effect

To intensify the ‘god effect’ in people already attracted to religious ideas, all we had to do was boost the activity of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. But should dopamine spike too high, murderous impulses like terrorism and jihad could rear up instead. The neurological line between the saint and the savage turns out to be razor-thin.

The right to feed lions

Little Caesar’s argued that the persecution of Christians and the feeding of them to ravenous big cats was a “deeply held” religious belief, that the continued survival of the 6k Christian employees, as well as the fact that they remained on company payroll, imposed a “substantial financial burden” on their religious liberty.

Bible translation is hard

Many bible thumper crusades are due to mistranslations. When they talk about ‘sexual immorality’ they are really translating πορνεία which means forced prostitution. Translation is also risky:

In 1631, Barker pounded out another poorly edited King James Bible. Unfortunately for him, it would prove to be his last. Smack dab in the middle of the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:14) — one of the Bible’s most integral passages — the publisher omitted one crucial word: “not.”