Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1792

Hey, Kids! If You Don’t Listen in Church, God Will Kill You

Jehovah’s Witness leaders have a simple message for children: Pay attention at meetings or you will be killed… just like Noah would’ve been.

You can see it in their latest propaganda video:

I had no idea children of JW parents wore bow ties to the dinner table…

John Cedars notes:

How any parent can watch this video and find threats of death at the hands of the Almighty an appropriate, healthy tool for shaping the attitudes and behavior of their children is beyond me.

Beyond me, too. If you want ki...

What Happens When People Pray to Different Gods for the Same Thing?

You can see how that plays out at The Perry Bible Fellowship.

(Spoiler: The Indian kid always wins when it comes to spelling bees.)

I imagine Jesus just fights himself when it comes to the Super Bowl.

(Thanks to @joecab for the link)

The Party of Fiscal Responsibility Doesn’t Mind Ramping Up Costly Attacks on Abortion

Apparently, when it comes to prioritizing fiscal responsibility or legislating conservative religious morality, the Republican party is less fiscally conservative than one might hope.

Writing for Think Progress, Tara Culp-Ressler notes that states have introduced more than one hundred bills so far this year to further regulate abortion, with more coming every day. (And that number was as of last week.)

Proposed legislation on the state level includes bills that would require women to watch anti...

Today I Learned That a Japanese Temple-Building Company Went Bankrupt After 1,400 Years

Brain-boggling sentencefrom a current story in the Atlantic:

In 2007 — after 1,429 years in business — the temple-construction company Kongo Gumi ran out of money andwas absorbed by a larger company.

That’s not a typo. Mediapost has more:

Kongo Gumi, the oldest independently owned company in the world, was founded in 578 A.D. as a Buddhist temple-building organization, subsidized in part by the Japanese government. …As the Japanese population grew, the need for more temples would follow. The com...

Will Pope Francis Make Up His Mind Already About How Many Children Couples Should Have?

File this under: “Yes, the Pope is still Catholic.”

According to Pope Francis, childless people are selfish. Not, of course, the childless churchmen who make such proclamations. Presumably, they are to be commended for their selfless devotion to God. The Pope has in mind childless married couples. Because, you know, it is just wrong not to make a kid you don’t want.

Pope Francis called childless couples “selfish” Wednesday while speaking to his usual audience at St. Peter’s Square.

“A society wi...

The 40 Questions That Will Point You To the True Religion™

Pastor Dan Delzell has a special formula for determining which, of the many contenders, is the True Religion™, and he’s shared it on Christian Post.

Pastor Delzell has suggested forty (very) leading questions, the answers to which, he believes, will show people the light. (Any guesses on which religion that is?)

He uses a tone that seems to suggest a bit of impartiality — referring throughout his piece to the central figure of the True Religion™ as a “prophet,” for instance. However, the conten...

Updates on the Daughter of Homeschooling Christian Parents Who Needed Help Obtaining Essential Life Documents

A couple of days ago, we learned about Alecia Faith Pennington, a 19-year-old woman who grew up in a homeschooling Christian household. Because of her parents’ disdain for government regulation of any kind, Alecia had no birth certificate (she was home-birthed), social security number, or school records (she was home-schooled).

The lack of identification meant she couldn’t obtain a driver’s license, go to college, vote, or even apply for a job. She made a plea for help:

There have been a few up...

Six and a Half Reasons Why the Bible Is Not Divinely Inspired

What would it take for me to consider converting to Christianity? Simple: Incontrovertible proof of God.

A lot of Christians are fond of saying that all the proof we need is right there in the Bible, but I’ve read the so-called Good Book and I see zero evidence of divinity. In fact, reading the Bible only served to convince me further that Christianity isa house of cards, with a Biblical foundation that isfull of mystifyingholes and fissures.

Matt, a former evangelical Christian who now writes...

Are You an Atheist Politician? If You’re British, It Will Help You, Says New Survey

According to a survey released yesterday by YouGov, nearly a third of British adults don’t believe in a God. (Compare that to the 50% who are at least nominally Christian.)

Even more interesting is when those respondents were asked what they thought about Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, both of whom are atheists. More Brits than not said they viewed the men more positively because of their godlessness.

(Obviously, that’s a far cry from the U.S., where a dec...

An Entirely New (To Me) Reason To Be an Atheist: It’s Cheaper

People who make an earnesteffort to glean what is true and what is make-belief may beswayed by science, philosophy, andempirical evidence. But ona different level, maybe they should also listen to their pocketbooks.

One rarely-used tickmark for atheism is that it’s cheaper than believing in gods. I never considered that, frankly, but commenterdagobarbz briefly makes the case here:

Atheism is cheaper. There’s no tithing, you can decide to be childless if you want, nobody is laying down rules tha...