Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I’ve blogged about these folks before here … what prompts me to return to the subject is an article in today’s UK Guardian. It is actually a reprint from the New Yorker, they have re-printed it because they felt it was that good, and I agree, so I’m pointing you at it. Should you be … Read more
Once upon a time long long ago … there existed a magical garden that had been created by a supernatural entity, and into this garden it put the first man and first woman that ever lived. Sadly the woman was tricked by a talking snake into eating some fruit, and so the magical super-entity became angry and tossed the pair out.
[roll forward in time to about 2,000 years ago]
Its all concerns a lady called Mary Stinemetz, 64, who needed a liver transplant, one that would be paid for by Medicaid, at the University of Kansas Hospital. The problem (for her) was that she would be forced to compromise her Jehovah’s Witness delusions, because she would also need to receive a blood transfusion as part of this operation, something she believes violates the fictional laws of a mythological supernatural entity (to whom she has given a pet name of “God”)
Now this little post is to simply amuse you, and is not designed to actually inform, except to perhaps enable you to laugh and my foolish attempts to engage with an utterly irrational believer on a rational basis.
The context here is that I’ve been attempting to explain to him the historical facts regarding the four gospels and that the only actual claim that jesus = god emerges in the Gospel of John (written about 95 CE). I’ve also explained that the phrase “son-of-God” does not in any way imply that Jesus = God, but rather that it is a Jewish belief that an individual is simply claiming to have been adopted by God as a son (like King David was).
However, what truly astonished me is that the sticking point was his claim that Jesus was Worshiped, hence he was God.
The news is that a Jordanian court will begin this month the trial of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard over a controversial caricature of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. The press reports …
Zakarya Sheikh, spokesman for a group of local media outlets that sued Westergaard in 2008 for depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, said on Thursday the artist and others have been summoned by a magistrates’ court in Amman to stand trial on April 25.”
A copy of the subpoena obtained by AFP says Westergaard “is accused of the crime of blasphemy.”
You can read more here .
